Eli5: How is it that Cows can consume the same fibrous grass that makes every other herbivores scat into tight balls, somehow manage to produce turds of such low density as to be called “cow patties”? ?

Question

Eli5: How is it that Cows can consume the same fibrous grass that makes every other herbivores scat into tight balls, somehow manage to produce turds of such low density as to be called “cow patties”? ?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Ok so there are 2 types of plant eating animal. There are foregut digesters and hindgut digesters. Why are they called this? Because it takes a lot of time to digest plants and nature has evolved two ways of doing this.

Foregut digesters do most of the digesting at the START of the digestive tract. Cows have several stomachs filled with digestive juices that do this BEFORE the food enters the intestine. Ever hear of chewing cud? That’s a cow swallowing some grass, then regurgitating it up into its mouth to give it another chew. The idea is it’s as mashed up as much as possible. Then digested as much as possible before getting to the intestine where the nutrients are absorbed.

Hindgut digesters do their digesting at the END of the intestine. They normally have a very large appendix filled with digestive juices that digest plant matter. Just like the foregut digesters have in their stomachs. This means that they need to eat more plants. Because they digestion happens at the end, they don’t get as much nutrients. So they need to eat more to make up for it. Some hindgut digesters like rabbits will eat their own droppings to give them a second pass.

Because of the different nature of their digesting systems they have very different poop. If you look at horse poop you can actually see the grass blades. Cow poop, not so much.