Herbivorous Animals - Examples and Curiosities - pets

Video: Herbivores | Carnivores | Omnivores | Types of Animals

Content

How is a herbivorous animal defined?
How is cellulose digested?
What types of herbivorous animals are there?
What are the most important herbivores?
List of herbivorous animals: monogastric
Horses
rodents
Others
List of herbivorous animals: polygastric
cattle
sheep
Goats
deer
camelids

Want to know some examples of herbivorous animals? Find out your ranking? In this PeritoAnimal article we explain what the herbivorous animals with examples and curiosities more frequent, its characteristics and some details about its behavior.

Remember that herbivores or phytophagous animals are those that feed primarily on plants, not just grass, and consider themselves the "primary consumers".

How is a herbivorous animal defined?

A herbivorous animal would be one whose diet is exclusively vegetable, being the plants and herbs the main ingredients of it. The fundamental component of vegetables is cellulose, a very complex carbohydrate or carbohydrate. This carbohydrate or carbohydrate is very difficult to digest, however nature, over millions of years of evolution, has developed several strategies for its use.

How is cellulose digested?

Herbivorous animals can use cellulose thanks to two actions or digestions: the mechanical digestion, due to a special dentition, with a flat shape, which consists in chewing the plants; and another due to action of microorganisms that have in your digestive tract. These microorganisms, through fermentation, are able to transform cellulose into simpler products, the main one being glucose.

What types of herbivorous animals are there?

There are two big groups: polygastric and monogastric. As its name implies, the first ones are the ones that have several stomachs (actually it is just a stomach with several compartments that communicate with each other). In some of the compartments there is a high concentration of microorganisms capable of fermenting cellulose. Teeth are also very special, as they are flat in shape and the upper jaw has no incisors. An example of these animals are those with two hooves, also known as ruminants. They also have the peculiarity of being able to regurgitate part of the gastric contents so that they can go back to chewing or ruminating. An example of these animals are cattle, goats and sheep.

Monogastrics are those that have only one stomach, so fermentation takes place elsewhere in the digestive system. This is the case of the horse and the rabbit. In this case, there is a great development of the blind. It lies between the end of the small intestine and the beginning of the large intestine, reaching considerable development. In monogastric herbivorous animals there is no possibility of rumination and, in the case of horses, have only one hoof and have incisors in the upper jaw.

In the case of rabbits (lagomorphs), the products resulting from the fermentation of the cecum are expelled through the faeces. These "special" feces are known as cecotrophs and are ingested by rabbits in order to take advantage of all the nutrients they contain. These, in turn, have a very special dental appliance, with the presence of continuously growing teeth (the upper and lower incisors).

What are the most important herbivores?

Most of these animals like to live in groups or herds (they are gregarious) and are considered prey. that's why their eye position is very sideways (so they can see who's chasing them without turning their head) and, in addition, they tend to have an avoidance to skittish behavior.

The most important are the cattle (cows), the sheep (sheep) and the goats (goats). In the case of monogastrics we have the horses, you rodents and the lagomorphs (rabbits).