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
Obligatory Carnivore does not equal Exclusively Carnivore. Many, perhaps even most, obligate carnivores are not exclusively carnivores.
Obligatory Carnivore means they have to eat meat or they will die. There are certain things their body needs that they cannot digest and extract out of non-meat sources. They can still eat other things, and some even like eating others things, cats love eating a bit of grass for example, but meat is the main component and they must get enough of it or they will die. Exactly how much of their diet has to be meat varies by animal.
But that classification is based on behavior in the wild. In the realm of human processing, it is theoretically possible to extract the things an obligate carnivore needs out of plants and give that to them in a way they can process it, essentially using a factory as a giant industrial pseudo-stomach to do some of the digesting they can’t. So you could theoretically feed even a cat a “vegan” diet, but it would be expensive and probably not work very well.
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