Eli5, Why does carnivorous animals only get a little amount of energy from eating plants unlike omnivorous animals?
In: Biology
Most of the energy in meat is in the form of fat and protein which are both easily digestable. It just goes straight into your blood stream. However plants tends to store a lot of energy as starch and fibers which is much harder to digest. The enzymes in your stomach needs a long time to break down these into sugars which can be absorbed. You might also need your gut bacteria to digest these plants which takes even longer and take up more space. Of course there are parts of the plant such as fruits and seeds which contain more oil and sugar and are therefore more easily digestable. But the digestion system of carnivores is still mostly adapted to protein and animal fat.
Digesting plant matter is hard and takes a looong digestive tract. Specialized carnivores don’t usually have that. So their digestive system simply doesn’t have the *time* to break down plant matter – most will/would pass undigested.
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