2025 Is the Year of the Snake—Do You Know How Snakeskin Bags Are Made?

Starting on January 29, the 2025 Lunar New Year welcomes the Year of the Snake in the Chinese zodiac, symbolizing wisdom, adaptability, growth, and change. As we shed the past, let’s embrace empathy for these remarkable reptiles.

From ocean reefs to rocky mountain peaks and lush forests to sandy deserts, snakes inhabit nearly every ecosystem on Earth. These sensitive, secretive animals are known to keep to themselves—but not all snakes are solitary. Mother Southern African rock pythons protectively wrap around their eggs to keep them warm and continue to nurture and vigilantly watch over their “snakelets” during their first few weeks of life. Some species of rattlesnakes and garter snakes form friendships and spend time together in groups.

Curious and perceptive, snakes learn through experience and can expertly adapt to new environments. King cobras, for example, exhibit impressive problem-solving skills and often modify their hunting strategies to best suit a situation.

Like all animals, snakes have thoughts, feelings, and unique personalities. Every snake is an individual who can experience pain, fear, and distress—yet every day, humans kill them for fashion and exploit them in the pet trade or at roadside zoos.

The Large-Scale Cruelty of the Snakeskin Industry

In the wild-animal skins trade, humans violently kill snakes so that their skins can be turned into handbags or other accessories.

A PETA Asia investigation revealed that farms in Vietnam confined thousands of snakes to cramped, filthy wire cages before workers slowly killed them by inflating them with compressed air. Footage showed a snake’s tail moving during the lethal inflation, indicating that the snakes may still be alive as workers skin and disembowel them. At Indonesian slaughterhouses tied to LVMH, PETA Asia investigators saw workers bashing snakes in the head with hammers, suspending them in the air, pumping them full of water, and cutting off their skin—likely while they were still able to feel.

On two python farms in Thailand that supply a tannery owned by Gucci’s parent company, PETA Asia’s eyewitnesses documented that workers kept snakes in small, barren boxes and cages—some of which were caked with feces. Workers pinned struggling pythons down, repeatedly struck them over the head with hammers, and drove metal hooks through their heads before inflating them with water, even as they continued to move about.

Snakes Are Bought and Sold Like Toys in the Pet Trade

In the cruel pet trade, countless snakes die before even making it to stores. A PETA investigation into U.S. Global Exotics, which supplied animals to other dealers connected to Petco and PetSmart, revealed that snakes suffered seizures and died every day from starvation, dehydration, untreated infections, injuries, and illnesses. Workers put many snakes in a freezer to die slowly and painfully.

Another PETA investigation into Global Captive Breeders, a company that bred and sold reptiles in California, found that workers neglected snakes so severely that they became emaciated and died while trapped inside filthy enclosures. And a PETA eyewitness investigation into a PetSmart supplier, Reptiles by Mack, revealed that workers routinely deprived snakes and other animals of veterinary care, fresh food, and water. One supervisor even admitted that he let sick snakes starve to death instead of putting them out of their misery.

Snakes who do survive these conditions often still suffer when misguided humans purchase them on impulse under the false notion that these complex animals are “starter pets.” All the things that snakes can do in their natural habitats—like warming themselves in the sun, cooling off by burrowing underground, slithering up trees, and using their keen senses to explore vast terrains—are impossible for them to do in glass tanks. Most humans can’t provide the right environment or care for a snake—it’s estimated that up to 75% of “pet” reptiles die within the first year inside a human home.

Snakes Suffer at Roadside Zoos

Snakes naturally avoid interacting with humans—but many roadside zoos put these shy, reserved animals on display so that visitors can gawk at them. Facilities that exploit pythons, boas, and other large, non-venomous snakes often confine them to cramped enclosures where they can’t even stretch out and deny them adequate water, heat, veterinary care, climbing structures, or rocks to lie or hide under. Many snakes kept in these conditions exhibit signs of intense distress—such as abnormal repetitive behavior, hissing, flattening their bodies, and regurgitating their food. Roadside zoos often house snakes together in inadequate enclosures, which can lead to aggression, injury, and disease.

Shed Light on Compassion

For the Year of the Snake and beyond, speak up for reptiles! Never wear animals’ skins, don’t support the pet trade, stay far away from roadside zoos, and set an example of kindness to our fellow animals.