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- "L'animale mangia il proprio …
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648
Meal is any of the occasions for eating food that occur by custom or habit at more or less fixed times.
I have come to realize that there are many things that are specific in Italian as oppose to English. Your answer "the animal eats its own meal" in English could be interpreted as "the animal eats its own food" as well since when you eat a meal, you're eating food. This is not the case though because duolingo is asking for a specific term: food. So to answer your specific question, because meal in Italian is pasto, whereas food is cibo.
Hope this helps!
Without the article, "l'animale mangia proprio cibo", it would mean really/precisely/indeed, although it would be a strange sentence, marveling at eating food of all things. As adverb, those are the meanings of proprio, but as adjective and pronoun it generally means own (see http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/italian-english/proprio for all meanings).
1001
proprio as an adverb (without the article) means 'truly', 'exactly'. Ex. È proprio vero = 'it's true indeed'.
As an adjective (with the article), it means 'one's own'. Ex. Le proprie abitudini = 'one's own habits'
1001
"It's" is the contraction of "it is" whereas "its" is a possessive pronoun.
"It's food" = it is food.
"Its food" = the food for it/it owns
1001
This adjective has all the normal forms: proprio/propria/propri/proprie
il mio proprio cibo
la sua propria casa
i miei propri cibi
le sue proprie case