Does the Mutual Killing and Eating Among Animals Incur Karmic Retribution?

The killing and consumption of animals among themselves certainly entails karmic retribution. This is because all actions performed by animals are recorded and stored as karmic seeds within their respective Tathagata storehouses, which inherently possess this function. When these karmic seeds mature, corresponding karmic consequences manifest. Therefore, all sentient beings serve as vessels for receiving retribution, each burdened with profound karmic obstructions and unable to extricate themselves. However, there is a distinction between animal killing and human killing: animals act purely for survival without malicious intent, whereas human killing involves issues of mental volition, rendering human killing karmically heavier. Killing after taking precepts additionally constitutes an offense against those precepts, compounding the karmic burden by adding the offense against precepts to the inherent karmic fault, thereby making the karmic consequence even more severe.