Let’s say there is a lion and a cow, in separate enclosures. If the lion were fed plants only, and the cow fed meat only **(assume, for hypothetical’s sake, that they willingly eat the odd food, which lions and cows normally would not do,) what would happen to their bodies? Would they die?
Various cats (all species?) will eventually go blind and die due to lack of taurine.
Cows would likely have difficulty digesting, at minimum.
Cows do eat small birds and mammals and even carrion, I don’t know how long they could exist on only meat. When my cat eats grass she usually throws it up.
It’s my understanding that cats mainly eat grass for the fiber - they can’t digest it per se, but it aids in the digestive process by its being there.
That being said - as noted above, taurine is an essential nutrient for cats because they can’t produce it internally like some animals (such as humans), so a vegan diet would ultimately prove fatal.
Aside from the taurine issue, cats simply don’t have the kind of digestive system that can break down and get much nutrition from plant material. They have a short small intestine with relatively low ability to extract nutrients. You might keep them going for a while feeding them high protein plant materials like beans, but eventually they’ll die.
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Cows do eat small birds and mammals and even carrion, I don’t know how long they could exist on only meat.
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Herbivores eat such things mainly for the minerals (calcium and sodium are in short supply in plants) rather than to obtain calories.
Quite right. If you provide them with a salt lick & mineral blocks, they won’t bother eating such things.
If you tried to feed a cow an all-meat diet, it would die in short order.
A cow’s stomach is just a big compost bin. Food goes in, it rots, and the cow digests the microbes produced.
If you add large amounts of meat to a cow’s stomach you are going to kill the animal through ammonia toxicity. Cattle have evolved to eat protein deficient vegetation. Their whole system is geared to scavenging as much protein as possible from their food. They just can’t handle large amounts of protein. The microbes in the stomach convert protein into ammonia. Normally that ammonia is safely recycled by the liver. If the protein level is too high the ammonia builds up in the bloodstream and kills the animal. Even feeding a cow too much meat meal can cause ammonia poisoning. Any cow that tries to get enough calories to survive by swallowing meat will receive so much protein that it will be dead within days.
Even if you can avoid the ammonia problem problem, the meat is going to rot and produce all sorts of nasty toxins. Botulism would kill most cattle within a few weeks, but there are a plethora of toxic microbes that will find their way in and cause lethal effects.
You just can not feed cattle on a high protein diet.
What do you mean by “willingly”? If an animal (including a human) has access to only one thing to eat, it’ll eat it. I wouldn’t call that “willing.” Or are you implying that these animals have free will, and that they can choose between a “the odd food” and starvation?
I don’t think lions eat grass when there’s no meat available.
We once had a calico cat who would eat any kind of food–except cat food.
We have a dog that prefers dry cat food to dry dog food. wtf?
It tastes better, and I think higher meat content. Open a can of each or grab some kibble of each type, and tell me which seems more appetizing (in relative terms).
3 of our cats will eat the dogs dry food, and probably the wet if he’d let them. The one one I am currently watching her chow down on pieces of paper and plastic from the windows of envelopes. She’s basically a pescetarian. Meat including chicken causes revulsion and she recoils visibly. Dry food is okay but only after trying that flavor once, hesitantly. Wet food is about 50/50 and it helps if most of it is fish-based. The only time she ever robbed food was from a bowl of tuna. Meanwhile another will rob the garbage and eat anything remotely edible, including bacon grease soaked paper towels. Cats is weird.
Carnivorous deer: