I seem to recall watching a dwarf slaughtering an animal a few times, and going from "slaughter animal" to "butcher animal," with a corpse or something in the butcher's shop in the latter case. 31.18.
Maybe my memory is faulty.
That's what I'm suggestion should happen, dwarf kills animal and then proceeds to butcher corpse or leaves the corpse there for someone else to do it. It definitely doesn't happen in .18. That's the earliest version I have played and slaughter animal is instantaneous there.
There just isn't a "work in progress" corpse, that's all - nothing that actually says "there's still half an elephant to be cut up", but the workshop is taken up by an elephant's corpse, and it takes a good chunk of time and work to clear that corpse off, and sort out its constituent parts.
I think there should be a work in progress corpse.
How would the killing work exactly? Does the dwarf attempt to punch it to death? Would butchers start requiring axes, comically becoming legendary warriors in the process? Or would you just need a knife to build the shop itself, pretending that copper knife would somehow be enough to bleed and chop up an elephant without struggle?
I can picture it now, a dwarf repeatedly failing to bleed the animal cleanly, instead sending limbs and gore flying everywhere in his haphazard attempts at the jugular.
Workshop tools are a whole other subject that I think has been posted here before. Right now all dwarves make everything with a rock and their bare hands, just like minecraft. In the case of slaughter animal (killing), this could actually works:
Dwarf grabs rock and hits animal over the head with it really hard. Animal is now a corpse, proceed to butchering...however that works...
*pictures dwarf ripping animal apart with bare hands and a rock*