why do cows regurgitate their food?

Question

just to chew it again?

Answer 1

What others have said is ok but the main point of chewing is to make the food into smaller particles. Cows eat hastily and they don't have many teeth. Hence the food is first taken in and then in leisure it is regurgitated to chew into fine particles and at that time it is properly mixed with saliva.

Answer 2

Cow Regurgitation

Answer 3

The last guy almost got it right.

Cows are ruminants, a group of animals that all eat plant matter and have four stomachs. The plant matter they eat is high in undigestible fiber (undigestible to the cow anyway). But ruminants have bacteria in their stomachs that break down the plant fiber for them. But for this process to work, they must re-chew their food after the bacteria have started their work. This is called "chewing the cud." However, I'm sure they can't do it in their sleep.

Answer 4

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Cows regurgitate or bring food up from the first stomach to chew it again. Its called chewing their cud. The purpose is to further grind the grasses they have eatten for better digestion.

Answer 5

Cows are from a group of animals called ruminants. They have 4 digestive stomache compartments in which they completely digest thier food.
Part of the process requires regergitating the food after one stomache has digested it, rechewing it, and reswallowing it to another stomache.
This process is so natural to them that they can do it in their sleep.

edit: I grew up on a farm, and believe me cows and sheep can and do chew thier cud in thier sleep.

Answer 6

cows don't have multiple stomachs, as popular belief would have you think, but several compartments in 1 stomach. They rechew their food to help digest cellulose, and special bacteria in their stomach help do this as well. Here is a picture from a text book I scanned: http://s62.photobucket.com/albums/h108/marilolli/?action=view¤t=cowdigestion.jpg

Answer 7

Just to add a tiny bit of detail - plants build themselves with cellulose; a lovely strong polymer that's very hard to break down. Animal tissues and cells are easy to break down to extract the yummy proteins and other materials we use to build ourselves, but plants are a bugger. Plant-eaters have to physically grind the daylights out of the material, and then many of them find it helps to ferment the stuff (bacterially digest it) to get as much as they can out of it before it gets out of them. That's hard, tedious work that's only worth it because (a) plants have oodles of high-energy and otherwise useful compounds in them ready to use, and (b) plants aren't hard to catch.

Answer 8

Yup, they need to rechew it to make it more easily digested.

Answer 9

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