Legato-Miko
New member
:wavey: Hey-lo everyone, I don't post very often (in fact, hardly at all - I gain more joy from just reading about all the topics than joining in, boring as it is), but I have a question that I don't think can be answered too well in a book and hasn't been specifically answered on this forum that I've seen, and who better to ask than you guys?
So here goes: I'm thinking of breeding corn snakes one day, "one day" being the operative phrase. I admit that I've had daydreams about just HUGE quantities of snakes being in my possession - racks and racks and racks of them. My question about all this is: Do you (meaning, "people who have what most would consider a large amount of snakes") find that you no longer care for snakes as individuals? Is it possible to keep large numbers of snakes and care for (in the way that people care for cherished pets) them all? Do you ever remember crossing a line, a line where on one side, snakes were pets, and on the other, they became breeding tools? I know that snakes do not have emotions like jealousy, loneliness, etc. - I can accept that. However (and I may be TOTALLY off-base with this), it would seem to me that keeping snakes in tubs might be akin to having rows and rows of stalls filled with racehorses, or lines of sows suckling piglets: you (again, this very well might be wrong) might stop thinking of them as creatures and start thinking of them as just running machines or walking bacon - or, in this case, slithering genes, where the genes they carry become more important to you than the actual animal.
This is kind of vague, I know, but any input would be VERY appreciated, as this entire topic has been bothering me for awhile. It's not that I think it's cruel to house snakes in plastic tubs...they're snakes, they like small places...it's the attitude of their keeper, and whether/how/in what way that attitude changes with the step from having "Slither the Pet" to "Number 588090, Coral Snow, Thrice Proven Breeder Female" that makes me wonder.
So here goes: I'm thinking of breeding corn snakes one day, "one day" being the operative phrase. I admit that I've had daydreams about just HUGE quantities of snakes being in my possession - racks and racks and racks of them. My question about all this is: Do you (meaning, "people who have what most would consider a large amount of snakes") find that you no longer care for snakes as individuals? Is it possible to keep large numbers of snakes and care for (in the way that people care for cherished pets) them all? Do you ever remember crossing a line, a line where on one side, snakes were pets, and on the other, they became breeding tools? I know that snakes do not have emotions like jealousy, loneliness, etc. - I can accept that. However (and I may be TOTALLY off-base with this), it would seem to me that keeping snakes in tubs might be akin to having rows and rows of stalls filled with racehorses, or lines of sows suckling piglets: you (again, this very well might be wrong) might stop thinking of them as creatures and start thinking of them as just running machines or walking bacon - or, in this case, slithering genes, where the genes they carry become more important to you than the actual animal.
This is kind of vague, I know, but any input would be VERY appreciated, as this entire topic has been bothering me for awhile. It's not that I think it's cruel to house snakes in plastic tubs...they're snakes, they like small places...it's the attitude of their keeper, and whether/how/in what way that attitude changes with the step from having "Slither the Pet" to "Number 588090, Coral Snow, Thrice Proven Breeder Female" that makes me wonder.