Can a lion survive on a fish diet?
For a short time, yes, but not indefinitely. Fish does not contain all the nutrients a lion requires, which it gets from eating the organs, muscle tissue and bones of large mammals. Also, it would take a lot of fish to fill a lion – it would most likely expend more energy catching them than it would get from eating them, making it an inefficient diet. You may not know this, but too much fish is also bad for domestic cats. They can be given it once in a while, but if fed on nothing else they will soon become ill due to lack of proper nutrients. Many people are not aware of this due to the common belief, often instilled from a young age by cartoons and children’s books, that ‘cats eat fish, dogs eat bones’. Most adults can figure out that a dog cannot survive on nothing but bones, but a surprising number think a cat will be fine fed on nothing but fish.
