I barely know anything about electricity. With that said:

I bought this decoration containing a bunch of what looks like LEDs (henceforth "lamp") at a thrift store

It needs 4.5 volts to function, according to the writing on a little etiquette. I wanted to ditch the AAA battery power supply and power it with a DC adapter, so I stripped the DC adapters end and cut off the lamp's cord that goes to the battery case/on off button in order to connect them like so

I even tried to attach the stripped DC wires to the original battery box, thinking that maybe there some circuitry magic going on in the little PCB.

The LEDs do not light up.

Questions:

1. aren't this wiring of the LEDs weird? It touches itself all the way, which to my very limited knowledge means shorting itself. Unless LEDs work differently?
2. the wiring of the LEDs seems to be of other material than copper. Is that relevant here?
3. why isn't this working?

In any case, I'll just rip out the LEDs and put in my own LEDs with wiring that's encased in some insulator, I guess.

Edit: I needed to remove the insulating coating from the LED wiring ends. I did it by burning it off. Thank you all!