why do cows have more than 1 stomach?

Question

i found an old link about 320 boring facts thru answers and got really bored after the the 100th so i'll make it simple and just ask lol.

Answer 1

"so they can chew their cud"

right........because that's not what their mouth does....idiot


but to answer your question:
Cattle have one stomach, with four compartments. They are the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum, the rumen being the largest compartment. Cattle sometimes consume metal objects which are deposited in the reticulum, the smallest compartment, and this is where hardware disease occurs. The reticulum is known as the "Honeycomb." The omasum's main function is to absorb water and nutrients from the digestible feed. The omasum is known as the "Many Plies." The abomasum is most like the human stomach; this is why it is known as the "True Stomach."

Answer 2

Cattle eat grass, a very low-nutrition food. They have developed a complicated digestive system to make the most out of what they eat.
Mammals cannot digest cellulose, the main ingredient in grass besides water. Cellulose is a carbohydrate and can be broken down into starches and sugars by some bacteria, so cattle keep a large supply of these bacteria in their stomachs. They can then digest the starches and sugars produced by the bacteria.
Grass is also extremely low in protein, yet cattle need protein, especially if they are lactating. And milk cows are bred to lactate a lot! So, there are some protists that can live and thrive in the bovine stomachs. These protists are digested by the animal, providing dietary protein. You might say the cattle have a protist ranch inside their stomachs, to feed themselves and their calves.
There is a complicated system of squishing the contents back and forth between stomachs, to facilitate the growth of the microorganisms and then their digestion.
I don't remember all the details, but that's the basic idea. Cattle have the most efficient digestive systems in the world for digesting grass. Rabbits have a long and inefficient gut, so they need to eat proportionally more to maintain themselves. Horses and deer have more sophisticated digestive systems than rabbit, but nothing in the graminivorous world can beat cattle!

Answer 3

The cow really doesn't have 4 stomachs but 4 chambers or compartments , although we refer to them as stomachs.
1.Rumen
2.Reticulum
3.Omasum
4.Abomasum

http://www.helium.com/tm/257255/stomachs-stomach-remarkable-organ

Digestion of food in the stomach of a Cow:
With a large stomach a cow can digest foods as dry feeds that human and non rudimentary digestive system cannot digest.Cow is a ruminant(group of hooved mammals that chew their cud) animal.

The rumen helps breaks down complex plant products like grass into cellulose.In the rumen and reticulum the food mixes well with the salivary juice and forms solid and liquid material.All the solid materials join together to form what is called bolus or cud.The bolus is then regurgitated to mouth where it chews the food again
and the fibers are broken down again.These fibers then forms cellulose and the protozoa and symbiotic bacteria(microbes) in the first 2 chambers reduces it to glucose.
Now the solid material is turned into a liquid form and moves to the next chamber called omasum.In the omasum ,all the water is absorbed and food finally reaches abomasum where food is finally digested.The digested food passes to the small intestine.This is why the stomach of a cow has 4 chambers and food digestion occurs in the last chamber called abomasum in much the same way as digestion occurs in human stomach.

So cow is a rudimentary animal and digestion occurs in 2 steps.It regurgitates the half digested food known as bolus.The bolus is eaten again which is called chewing the cud.

Answer 4

because cows do nothing but graze all day they need more than 1 stomach to handle all the grass

Answer 5

So they can chew their cud