ELi5: How do some animals get enough nutrients out of eating hay or grass or a single variety of leaf for their entire lives?
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Beside what everyone is saying, there are plenty of minerals in grass. Plants get them from the soil, but those minerals aren’t really absorbed well, so that’s another reason why these animals need to eat a lot to get enough minerals. Many mammals are also able to synthesize vitamins that we humans can’t (that’s why we need to get them from our diet) or they have gut bacteria that do it for them.
You’re referring to cellulose. It’s what gives plants structure. Humans cannot digest cellulose. So if we ate grass and leaves all we would get is a tummy ache. But a lot of animals can digest cellulose. Broadly speaking animals that can digest cellulose are called ruminants. They are able to digest cellulose thanks to their weird stomachs. While you and I just have one cavity in our stomach where all our food goes, ruminants have a 4 chamber stomach. This lets them digest the fuck out of whatever they’re eating. And with some help of healthy gut microbes the cellulose can be broken down into simpler carbohydrates. Which can then be digested normally.
I think people forget plants are made out of the same stuff we are. Pro Tien sugar fat all the vitamins and minerals. It’s all the same.
They don’t.
The grass meadow/field/paddock has multiple varieties of grass, each with a different ratio of nutrients.
Grass eaters also ferment their food along their gastrointestinal tract
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