"I cani non mangiano il cioccolato."
Translation:The dogs do not eat chocolate.
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That's correct. In negative sentences using the partitive, de is to be used -> Les chiens ne mangent pas de chocolat. https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/amp/french-easy-learning/the-partitive-article-du-de-la-de-l-and-des
That's not quite right.
"De" simply means "of". It is not a variation of the definite article.
"Les chiens ne mangent pas du chocolat", where "du" is the merger of "de" and "le" in French. Literally "The dogs do not eat of the chocolate". Generally "du/de la/des" (de + les) is the partitive, roughly comparable to the English "some" but not used in all the same contexts.
"The dogs can not eat chocolate" would be "i cani non possono mangiare il cioccolato."
English uses the auxiliary "do" when we want to emphasize something (I do eat chocolate), negate something (I do not eat chocolate), or ask a question (Do I eat chocolate?). In Italian, they just negate the verb directly: non mangiano, literally "not eat." To say "can not eat" involves bringing in an entirely different verb, one that means "is able to," and then negating that.
Here is quite an extensive explanation about the Italian definite articles:
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/20945484/Rules-on-Italian-Articles
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