I'm going to try and do this formally once I've got more information theory under my belt, but I suspect that a very large portion of the "deaths" needed to sustain information in a population of large animals actually occur in gametes and embryos. Both human eggs and sperm for instance undergo a competition process that selects the best, and pre-implantation lethality in embryos is extremely common - which is one of the reasons for humans' very low fertility rate.