If cats are obligate carnivores, why do we feed them rice and peas(among other non-meat things)?
To my knowledge, while dogs can have some carbohydrates, a cats liver and pancreas will be overly stressed dealing with carbs. They need to eat meat and exclusively meat to survive and be healthy. So why do I find so many different cat foods with things *other* than meat or fish? Is it filler?
In: Biology
They can eat non-meat foods. But they can’t get all their required nutrients from only vegetables.
The tl;dr is that there are 20 amino acids. Many animals can convert some of them into others in their body (i.e., use an excess of ABC to create XYZ). But no animal can just synthesize them all, and some amount needs to come from food.
Plants do not necessarily synthesize all the amino acids in the same amounts that mammals do (they are a different species entirely, after all). So we can only get some baseline amino acids from plants, and others must be synthesized from those plant amino acids. If you can’t synthesize a certain amino acid, and plants don’t have it in sufficient quantity, then you’re an obligate carnivore.
With cats, Taurine is the big one. Plants don’t make it in any significant quantity. Cats have evolved with a dependence on other animals eating plants and synthesizing it. This is what makes cats an obligate carnivore.
So cats can still eat non-meat dishes, but they are required to have a significant amount of meat in their diet to provide those nutrients.
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