Eat My Grandma?

In many Eastern religions meat-eating is prohibited. Even more so if the animal in question is a cow. Many who endorse samsara (the belief in a cycle of re-births) believe animals can be human relatives and loved ones incarnate.

It’s no surprise they follow a vegetarian diet. Everyone can understand the dislike of the idea of eating your relative, say, your Grandma. And if you believed that any given animal can, in fact, be your Grandma, abstaining from meat seems a rather reasonable option.

But what about the fact that in the animal kingdom some animals eat other animals?

I would like to find an answer to these two interrelated questions: (1) If meat-eating is so strongly prohibited for human beings, how and why do our reincarnate friends and family pick up the habit of eating one another? (2) Why is it prohibited for a human being to eat meat, when his reincarnate friends and family do the same every day?

Perhaps in the Hindu “hierarchy of animals” the “less holy” animals are carnivores and omnivores? I don't know.