Animals Cursed?

I was thinking just the other day, what happened to all the animals after Genesis 3?  Were there carnivores?  Did the lions eat the lambs?  Did snakes bite bison in the ankles and the bison die?  All of these questions stem from the idea that the Bible really does not let us in the Garden of Eden to see the animals before the fall or how they interacted with each other while in the Garden.

Adam, in Genesis 2:17, was told that if he ate of the tree in the garden, known as the the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, he would certainly die.  So, that leads me to think that Adam must know what death is.  How could Why would God tell Adam that the consequence of his disobedience would result in something that Adam has never heard of or seen before?  I can imagine that as God finished telling Adam that he will absolutely die, a Bald Eagle flew over, swooped down and picked up a little bunny.  Then Adam gulped as he thought that he to would end up like that bunny if he would just disobey his Creator and eat a piece of fruit that he no doubt was looking at while God was speaking to him.

Look at what happened to Noah.  When originally thinking about this, I thought that God told Noah he would bring rain to the earth and flood it and that Noah had never seen rain before, but look at Genesis 6.  First God told Noah that he would destroy the earth.  Noah certainly knew what that meant.  He had heard of the destroyed family of Adam and Eve.  He has seen people destroy other peoples homes and carts and jars.  Then God said that He was going to bring floodwaters on the earth and destroy all life under Heaven.  So, God never told Noah anything that he would not understand, now that I look at it.  Could we say the same about Adam?

Then again, Adam was very new to the things going on in the Garden.  He had never seen anything that he saw before.  However, would God not explain to His child, His creation, what death is?  God knew what was going to happen in the third chapter of Genesis, certainly He would explain death at least once, making sure that Adam knew the consequences and what better way of explaining than the death of an animal?  Did death not exist before the fall at all?

All that leads to the over arching question: did animals suffer because of the fall of man?  We know that the serpent was cursed.  We also know that Genesis says that the serpent would be the most cursed of all animals.  Perhaps that is saying that all animals would be cursed and that the serpent would be the most cursed.  But couldn't it also mean that only the serpent was cursed?  I don't know, but I do know that as of November 3rd, 2009, I think that there were carnivores and vegetarian animals in the garden.