Quote Originally Posted by GhandiOwnsYou View Post
I don't really have an issue with it. If the piranhas were wild, the mouse wouldn't be dead. If the mouse was already dead, then someone would have had to have killed it prior to dinner time anyway. I fail to see how suffocating or smashing said mouse's head is more humane than chucking it to the piranha's alive. Granted, the people involved sound like (and probably are) idiots, but it's still a totally natural event.

What would be the preference here? Buy commercially killed mice? Smash your mouse with a hammer? Suffocate the mouse? Poison the mouse and kill all animals involved? The bottom line is, the mouse is food. I used to have a chinese water dragon, I HAD to feed it live crickets. It wouldn't touch a dead cricket. Does that make me cruel?
Piranha are scavengers and timid in the wild; they won't typically feed on live animals. They almost certainly wouldn't fee on live mice like this.

And buying dead animals to feed pets is certainly more humane than having it eviscerated by piranha.