Myth 95: “A rescue animal must get plentiful high‑energy food and lots of water to recover”

Some people mean it good, but they are not qualified. Some—even worse—just show off and use weak common sense, with a mouthful of sentiment about how they "rescue." In fact, both commit an ethical crime: instead of saving animals' lives, they unknowingly torture them, prolong their misery, and cause a painful death.

No overfeeding, no high energy

Recovering does not mean overfeeding with totally wrong food, like most do. To feed ad libitum with fatty superworms and dubia roaches full of uric acid is a sentence to death and not rescue. The diet chosen damages kidneys and digestion. Just as chronic diseases need time to develop, we cannot think that goodwill to recover quickly is beneficial.

Do not rush

WW@ Lessons

Once freed from months or years of starving in inhuman conditions in World War II concentration camps, liberated victims died in hundreds—just while drinking water and eating "enough." Rehabilitation must not be driven by goodwill but by science, and by biological and medical competence.

Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation must be a slow, cautious process, full of care, monitoring, supplementation, and adjustments. It is not a race for added body mass.

Rehydration

Dehydrated animals also suffer under ad libitum drinking and easily die from this practice. Slow, natural rehydration is the name of the game—using night fogging, maintaining better lower temperatures, and applying a slow, controlled process.

Water is poison. Only the dose matters. It can be 3 ml of water that kills your chameleon while you think you are saving its life.

Rescue is science, not sentiment. 

Overfeeding and flooding with water is not kindness—it is torture disguised as care, a lethal mistake that ends life in the name of "help." If we confuse goodwill with competence, we do not rescue; we execute—slowly.