Comment by neaden

The story is pretty clearly meant to indicate that the Babylonians were worshiping an animal though. The theology of the book of Daniel emphasises that the Gods of the Babylonians don't exist, this story happens around the same time Daniel proves the priests had a secret passage they were using to get the food offered to Bel and eat it at night while pretending that Bel was eating it. Or when Daniel talks to King Belshazzar and says "You have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose power is your very breath and to whom belong all your ways, you have not honored". This is not to argue for the historical accuracy of the stories, just that the point is that Daniel is acting as a debunker of the Babylonian beliefs in these stories while asserting the supremacy of the Israelite beliefs.