Animals beginning to mate tucked into fried food (6)

'animals' is the definition.
The answer is an example.

'beginning to mate tucked into fried food' is the wordplay.
'beginning to' indicates taking the first letters.
'tucked into' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'fried food' becomes 'chips' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
The initial letter of 'mate' is 'm'.
'm' placed into 'chips' is 'CHIMPS'.

Can you help me to learn more?