The zoo even says it will 'euthanize' the animals prior to their being eaten. That seems silly if they are truly trying to keep things 'natural', and I know some animals just won't go for dead prey.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/0 ... predators/
I used to have pet copperhead snakes and pet black rat snakes, and neither would eat anything dead. The copperhead was only interested in something warm (they have thermal eye 'pits' that they use to sense their prey), and the rat snakes are constrictors, so pretty much go after moving prey, crush them enough that they suffocate, then they eat them afterwards. I did experiment a bit with hot cotton balls (dipped in boiling water) dangled in the dark, and the copperheads tracked them but weren't all that interested otherwise (so trying to feed them a dead-but-warm mouse might have been possible, but not worth the effort), and nothing but a live and moving mouse or rat was of interest to the rat snakes.
So I'm not surprised if a lion or tiger wants to eat a zebra or antelope or whatever that is ALIVE... It's kind of what they do.
In the US, so many people are so distanced from the natural world that they don't know milk comes from cows, and evidently are shocked that predators eat . . . prey. . .
