Depends on where you live.

Only if you video it for entertainment purposes. Some snakes will only eat live food, if you didn't offer it live food to eat it would be classed as animal cruelty. It's only supposed to be done if your snake regularly refuses frozen thawed food and you feel its a last resort.

very few species of snake won't eat prekilled food in captivity, and those that are tend not to be the best captives for many other reasons.

my boa refuses frozen /thawed rats. will only eat live, and certain coloration too

some snakes won't eat dead/frozen rats. this one isn't eating live ones either, though, so it's pretty much in the same position either way.

OP said they fed it (or tried to feed it at least) a live Rat for the FIRST time.

I didn't know much about pet snakes and live food until now. These FML comments are pretty interesting!

I don't know who taught you how to feed your snake but do not leave it in for more than an hour. And that whole hour you should be keeping an eye on it. If you leave it in for longer than that like days like you say then your snake will most likely be injured or dead by the time you check back in on it

"A day or so" not days. And my snake is in constant view. Regardless, this is just information I have researched, I don't feed live food because my snake grew up on frozen.

Learn your facts. Thankfully the United States doesn't have those asinine laws and we are able to feed our snakes live if they won't take anything else. I live in FL, same as this person, and we live fed all our snakes until a few months ago.

some snakes won't typically take frozen/thawed initially, some won't ever and some will only eat f/t no matter what you try. saying you don't care about the natural order of things is more concerning than anything else actually. you can't rewrite nature just because you don't agree with it.

What a stupid argument. That's like saying that feeding my bearded dragon live crickets is inhumane and I shouldn't be doing it because he's not in his natural habitat.

yea that is a stupid agrument, the snakes gotta eat, it not really inhumane to live feed it, thats what they eat, and besides rats are usually pests anyway, I dont understand keeping any rodents as pets, but to each his own.

Please go back to your drum circle us damn hippie

It isn't. Tf.

They can actually dislocate their own jaws to consume large pray. The size of the meal isn't the issue

Their jaws don't dislocate, they have a different kind of hinge joint.

I didn't think I was completely right. That was the best way I knew how to explain it. Thanks for correcting me though. I love snakes so I'm disappointed I couldn't remember because I used to watch and read stuff about them for hours when I was younger

Same, I used to own a couple but I travel a lot so couldn't keep any in the end. Also, a 4ft snake could manage a small rat I reckon. The issue really is that live feeding is quite dangerous for the snake (and you).