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Question

Why does "chewing the cud" aid in the digestive process of a ruminant?

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Answer 1

It breaks up the partially digested plant materiel [cellulose] that ruminants ferment in their stomachs to get energy.

Rumiants cant harness energy from the plant fiber that they eat on their own, but the bacteria in their stomachs can. To help it along, they repeatedly masticate their "CUD"

CHICO STATE!! GO WILDCATS!!

Answer 2

"A ruminant is any hooved animal that digests its food in two steps, first by eating the raw material and regurgitating a semi-digested form known as cud, then eating the cud, a process called ruminating. Ruminants include cattle, goats, sheep, camels, llamas, giraffes, bison, buffalo, deer, wildebeast, and antelope. The suborder Ruminantia includes all those except the camels and llamas, which are Tylopoda. Ruminants also share another anatomical feature in that they all have an even number of toes."

Cows have an excellent digestion system for herbivores; they gain nutrition out of more plant life then many others. Grass doesn't have that much nutritional value so gain nutrition from it requires a system that can break it down: Therefore the 4 stomachs. But, even that is not enough sometimes, so when a cow rests they regurgitate some undigested food to give it a better chewing so that their stomachs can wring every ounce of nutrition out of it. That ruminant is the hard plant matter that is just too tough to be digested even with four stomachs. So the cow returns it to the first phase of digestion--chewing. When a cow rests it often pulls up these ruminants to chew them even more.

If a cow did not chew its cud, that hard residue that its stomach's can't digest, then it would have more waste and need to eat more grass. An elephant is a lousy herbivore, they don't get as much nutritional value out of grass and hay as others herbivores can. So elephants produce huge piles of waste and have to eat hundreds of pounds each day. If an elephant could chew its cud then it would be able to spend more time doing other things instead of being a walking, eating, waste dropping machine.

Humans are not very good herbivores, although Vegans will argue with me on that. When a human eats celery they spend more energy trying to chew and soften up that celery than they get from eating it. Celery is actually a negative calorie food! if a cow ate celery then they would get much more nutrition out of it.

Since grass wants to survive it makes sure that most animals can't get a lot of nutrition from eating it; in response some animals, the ruminant order, learned to chew their food more, by chewing their cud. Cows went further by developing 4 stomachs to handle tougher plants.

Answer 3

Ruminants - animals that chew their cud - do so because they eat tough plants that are very difficult to get nutrients out of. By repeatedly chewing the plants, and sending it through the four compartments in the stomach, the animal is able to get the maximum amount of nutrients out of the food it eats.

Also, since these animals are herbivores, it allows them to quickly get food, then be able to leisurely digest it in secure areas, away from predators.