Did Disney animators really bring live animals into the studio?

The answer

Disney maintained a decades-long tradition of bringing live animals into its studios so animators could study their movements firsthand. For the 1967 Jungle Book, animator Milt Kahl studied live-action footage from Disney's own A Tiger Walks (1964) and Jungle Cat (1960) to replicate the precise movement of big cats' muscles and joints. The practice stretched from Dumbo in 1941 through The Lion King in 1994, with real deer brought in for Bambi and live lions studied for Simba. Animators sketched the animals in motion, translating biological reality into fluid animation. Disney eventually discontinued the practice, no longer allowing exotic animals into studios for research, ending a tradition that had produced some of animation's most lifelike character work.