“but allowing hunters to decapitate pythons—who remain alive and in agony and who will writhe for an hour even after their heads have been cut off—is despicably cruel,” PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk said....”
Oh, BTW. Ms Newkirk is an idiot.
She may be an idiot but in this case, she is correct.
Euthanizing snakes is a tricky proposition.
Using the usual sedative methods don’t work because their metabolisms are so slow.
Cutting their heads off is brutal as the head remains alive and aware of pain for quite a long time.
The most common method is “pithing” in which a spike is driven precisely through the brain.
Were it my snake suffering from an irreversible illness, I’d just smash its head with a brick.
That’s the only quick, sure and kind way to do it.
“The idiot” is right.
“who remain alive and in agony and who will writhe for an hour even after their heads have been cut off”
Funny.
We skinned a rattler once and put it in a ziplock for supper. it writhed for a good hour, de-headed, skinned and gutted.