eli5 : Why can’t we (humans) eat wood? It contains glucose, and termites can eat it for example! (Even if raw wood would be pretty hard to chew, we could mix it down into some kind of paste or powder, so idk)
In: Biology
Termites have microbes in their digestive tracts that break down the cellulose into sugars that they can digest. I suppose if you could get those to live in your gut you could probably eat it too.
Cows and other ruminants have multiple stomachs that let the cellulose in grass ferment into something digestible, which is a similar situation.
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