Animal expert in the house?

from your reference said:
Little Tyke continued to do extremely well on a daily diet of cooked grain, raw eggs and milk. By four years of age she was fully grown and weighed 352 pounds (160 kg).
Click to expand...

Ok, eggs are meat, but in their undeveloped state. So is milk.

Mystery solved. The lion ate pre-meat.
 
And could it gather vegetarian food for itself?
Click to expand...
Yes. The semi-digested plant matter out of its prey's stomach.

They could survive without this (will seek it out though and do benefit from it)
They could not survive without meat of some kind, not well enough to function properly and would inevitably die in the wild.
You could maybe string their pitiful life along without meat in captivity. not sure, wouldn't think so.
 
And most 'carnivores' technically are omnivorous for the reason I mentioned- eating their preys herbivorous stomach contents.
Ocean predators tend to be exceptions, and polar bears(which kind of are ocean predators).
If you go down the food chain there is a herbivore somewhere, like algae eating krill, but I guess thats not really worth talking about.

But yeah if the question in this thread is are lions just choosing to be carnivores to be assholes then no, they really do need to eat meat to survive.
 
Lions would not live very long on a true vegetarian diet as opposed to dogs who (although theu wouldn't like it) are less specialized than the cat family.
 
the lion's digestive and metabolic systems are designed for a high fat/protien diet, and are not designed for a high cellulose diet.

If you can provide the lion with plant based food which was digestable by it's stomach, absorabable by its intestines, and provides the nutrients its bones, muscles, etc required to repair themselves, then yes, a lion could survive physically on plant matter alone.
A mound of grass would not work, because the lion wouldn't be able to digest it. A pile of soy wouldn't work, because it wouldn't provide enough fats, protiens, colesterol, etc.
Could it gather veg. food for itself? No, because most of the food I'm talking about above requires preperation in order to be digestable by the lion. Tofu, wheat glutin, etc, is not available in the wild; it's raw forms, soy beans and weat grain, are not digestable by a carnivorous digestive system.

However, as Dr. Lou suggested, even if the lion is able to physically survive on this veg diet, lions are also designed for the hunt. Even in captivity where all obvious needs are taken care of, the lack of mental reward to tracking and killing prey may result in metal defects in the animal. A short temper, moodiness, general malaise or depression.
And it would have no real understanding of the function of hunting, so if it were ever released into the wild, there is a really good chance that it would starve to death. Sitting around, waiting for it's bowl of miso soup. It wouldn't understand that the elk over there is supposed to be dinner.
This is acommon problem when trying to release captured and injured animals back into the wild. If they become too used to humans and having food provided for them, then they die once released, unable to fend for themselves.
 
Last edited:
The lion may not necessarily recognize the elk as dinner, but it'd probably at least half-heartedly go after it. The being an asshole thing is an interesting question. Predator's instincts make it an asshole. Kittens play behavior is merely instincts honing the hunting skill. Predator's enjoy tracking, hunting, killing, wouldn't that make him an asshole? Of course, just because it enjoys doing something, if not taught the proper techniques, it probably wouldn't do too good at it, and would suffer as a consequence.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top