I'm going to say yes, but with a bit of a twist.

Digesting your lover's gamete

Everything on earth pretty much has one of two methods of interacting with the genetic material of other creatures. Either you eat them or you breed with them. We're extremely flexible with the first, being able to break down most proteins and carbohydrates to make our building blocks. In contrast, our genetics is super-picky about what you can do the second with. Our interbreeding mechanism is simplistic compared to our eating mechanism, requiring the two sets of genetics to match up like a zipper.

Chemically speaking, though, it doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. A sophisticated gamete could cannibalize the genetics of another gamete, picking and choosing which parts it wants to make use of. It might not be as simple as breaking down the genetics in their entirety, possibly involving tens of thousands of viruses, each of which seeks out a chunk of the target genetics and delivers it to a mechanism that assembles it to spec.

Artificial limitations

For this to work, it would require that the target gamete have all of the required building blocks. This limits the options, and you have to ask why the creatures can't breed with their own species. The key to back-justifying this one is the essential nature of predation.

I think it would be a safe to use vitamins as a source of comparison. Humans don't make our own vitamin C. We lost that gene somewhere along the way, because it's more efficient to get it from the things we eat. Similarly, your "predator genetics" might just not be able to reproduce itself without additional source material.

So, overall, this is justifiable. Not likely, of course, but that would be arguing "irreducible complexity," which is always a losing bet against the anthropic principle.

I'm going to say yes, but with a bit of a twist.

Digesting your lover's gamete

Everything on earth pretty much has two methods of interacting with the genetic material of other creatures. Either you eat them or you breed with them. We're extremely flexible with the first, being able to break down most proteins and carbohydrates to make our building blocks. In contrast, our genetics is super-picky about what you can do the second with. Our interbreeding mechanism is simplistic compared to our eating mechanism, requiring the two sets of genetics to match up like a zipper.

Chemically speaking, though, it doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. A sophisticated gamete could cannibalize the genetics of another gamete, picking and choosing which parts it wants to make use of. It might not be as simple as breaking down the genetics in their entirety, possibly involving tens of thousands of viruses, each of which seeks out a chunk of the target genetics and delivers it to a mechanism that assembles it to spec.

Artificial limitations

For this to work, it would require that the target gamete have all of the required building blocks. This limits the options, and you have to ask why the creatures can't breed with their own species. The key to back-justifying this one is the essential nature of predation.

I think it would be a safe to use vitamins as a source of comparison. Humans don't make our own vitamin C. We lost that gene somewhere along the way, because it's more efficient to get it from the things we eat. Similarly, your "predator genetics" might just not be able to reproduce itself without additional source material.

So, overall, this is justifiable. Not likely, of course, but that would be arguing "irreducible complexity," which is always a losing bet against the anthropic principle.

I'm going to say yes, but with a bit of a twist.

Everything on earth pretty much has one of two methods of interacting with the genetic material of other creatures. Either you eat them or you breed with them. We're extremely flexible with the first, being able to break down most proteins and carbohydrates to make our building blocks. In contrast, our genetics is super-picky about what you can do the second with. Our interbreeding mechanism is simplistic compared to our eating mechanism, requiring the two sets of genetics to match up like a zipper.

Chemically speaking, though, it doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. A sophisticated zygote could cannibalize the genetics of another zygote, picking and choosing which parts it wants to make use of. It might not be as simple as breaking down the genetics in their entirety, possibly involving tens of thousands of viruses, each of which seeks out a chunk of the target genetics and delivers it to a mechanism that assembles it to spec.

For this to work, it would require that the target zygote have all of the required building blocks. This limits the options, and you have to ask why the creatures can't breed with their own species. I think it would be a safe back-justification to use vitamins as a source of comparison. Humans don't make our own vitamin C. We lost that gene somewhere along the way, so we have to get it as part of our diet. Similarly, your "predator genetics" might just not be able to reproduce itself without additional source material.

So, overall, this is justifiable. Not likely, of course, but that would be arguing "irreducible complexity," which is always a losing bet against the anthropic principle.

I'm going to say yes, but with a bit of a twist.

Digesting your lover's gamete

Everything on earth pretty much has one of two methods of interacting with the genetic material of other creatures. Either you eat them or you breed with them. We're extremely flexible with the first, being able to break down most proteins and carbohydrates to make our building blocks. In contrast, our genetics is super-picky about what you can do the second with. Our interbreeding mechanism is simplistic compared to our eating mechanism, requiring the two sets of genetics to match up like a zipper.

Chemically speaking, though, it doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. A sophisticated gamete could cannibalize the genetics of another gamete, picking and choosing which parts it wants to make use of. It might not be as simple as breaking down the genetics in their entirety, possibly involving tens of thousands of viruses, each of which seeks out a chunk of the target genetics and delivers it to a mechanism that assembles it to spec.

Artificial limitations

For this to work, it would require that the target gamete have all of the required building blocks. This limits the options, and you have to ask why the creatures can't breed with their own species. The key to back-justifying this one is the essential nature of predation. 

I think it would be a safe to use vitamins as a source of comparison. Humans don't make our own vitamin C. We lost that gene somewhere along the way, because it's more efficient to get it from the things we eat. Similarly, your "predator genetics" might just not be able to reproduce itself without additional source material.

So, overall, this is justifiable. Not likely, of course, but that would be arguing "irreducible complexity," which is always a losing bet against the anthropic principle.