Why Can Tigers Eat Fish While Lions Cannot?

Within the cat family, there are approximately 40 species divided into 14 genera. Strictly speaking,All cats are obligate carnivores.It is mentioned strictly because there will definitely be netizens who will refute it by bringing their pets to counter this, because some cat owners try to save money by mixing vegetarian food with meat to feed their cats, and cats have eaten it, so they are considered omnivorous animals.

However, please remember that the vast majority of the essential nutrients for cats are provided by meat, plant-based foods only contain low-utilization plant proteins and a large amount of carbohydrates, and because cats' digestive tracts are short, they are not suitable for digesting proteins that require a long time to ferment, so cat owners should not do things contrary to nature when feeding their cats.

In meat, fish is also meat, but it has a higher water content and lower fat content. We all know that cats like to eat fish. Later, through learning, I found out that tigers also like to eat fish, as do cheetahs and leopards, although some don't like to eat it, but in a state of hunger, they can accept it.However, lions are an exception; they will not eat fish even when hungry.

I am a great admirer of wild animals. As a child, I loved watching all kinds of documentaries in 'Animal World'. Later, I chose to travel to Africa and South America to hunt and observe these wild animals up close. I am also very enthusiastic about sharing my knowledge and habits of wild animals with friends, so my knowledge of cats eating fish comes from a chat with a friend.

The friend is a large cat keeper at a foreign zoo, and the experiment of feeding tigers with fish came from the scene of the tiger eating fish in the movie 'Life of Pi', so the friend wanted to personally verify whether tigers really like to eat fish. In later feeding, he found that tigers can indeed eat fish and eat it with relish.

It's also amazing that that tiger, born and raised in the zoo, had never seen fish before, but when it tasted a whole raw fish for the first time, it skillfully peeled the fish skin and then used its forked tongue to remove the fish bones. Apparently, they knew that fish contain fine spines.

At the same time, when feeding tigers with mammalian meat and fish, they would first choose to eat mammalian meat.

For leopards and other cat species, eating fish is readily accepted. But the friend found that only lions refuse to eat fish, regardless of whether they are hungry, lions will first lick their tongues with their tongues, then ignore it. The friend initially thought that the lion was willful or picky, but no matter which lion it was, the result was the same.

Later, I also saw foreign documentaries introducing a family that raised lions and tigers, when feeding fish to the tigers, the tigers still showed guarding behavior, but the lions did not compete for food; even when feeding fish to a single lion, they would ignore it.

Currently, there is no clear explanation that can prove the reason behind the lion's refusal to eat fish. Perhaps because lions have been breeding in the grasslands for generations and have never encountered fish, they may be sensitive to the smell of unfamiliar species, just like lions don't eat hyena meat because they kill hyenas.