Have you ever wondered how your body was different from a cows? Humans and animals are the same in many ways, but also very different from common animals, especially when it comes to our digestive systems. All animals need energy in order to grow big and strong but also just make it through their every day. But when we eat, where does it go? Through the digestive system!
Digestive system basics
The digestive system involves everything that goes into your mouth to everything that comes out in your poops.
- It all starts in your mouth, you grab a snack and take a big bite out of it. Then you chew and chew until it’s small enough to swallow. When you swallow it, it goes down a tube called your esophagus that leads right into your stomach.
- The stomach works hard to break down your food into the smallest pieces possible so it can move into your intestines.
- Your intestines are the loops and loops of tubes in your tummy that absorb what you’ve eaten to give you energy to run around.
- But not everything we eat can be totally digested, so what happens after you eat a big meal? You relax for a while and then you need to go to the bathroom. Everything that the body cant digest and absorb is released from the body as POOP!! Your poop is just the leftovers of what you body didn’t need!
- So this is how OUR bodies work… But what about the bodies of other animals, such as ruminants?
Ruminant Animals (Like cows!)
A ruminant is an animal that has a Rumen as a part of their digestive system. There are many different animals around the world that are considered ruminants! A few examples you might be more familiar with are cows, deer, moose, but both giraffes and hippos are considered ruminants too! What happens to food when a ruminant eats?
While ruminants also have 1 stomach just like humans, it is much larger and more complex. Their stomach is made up of 4 compartments and this is where we can talk about the rumen.
First, what is the same? Ruminants put food in their mouth and chew it up with their teeth and swallow it just like you. It travels down the esophagus and into the stomach. And up to this point everything has been the same.
So what’s different? Each of the 4 compartments in a ruminant’s stomach looks different on the inside because they do different things. The reticulum has honeycomb shape that helps it to take up small particles to move them down the digestive tract. It works with the rumen to mix together the food that comes down the esophagus.
The rumen has little lily-pad like projections to help it break down bigger pieces. And when pieces are too big to digest, the rumen pushes those pieces back up the esophagus so that the ruminant can chew it up again. This is really unique about ruminants and is called “chewing their cud” because without the smallest pieces, they cannot get the most energy out of their food.
Once the small pieces have been mixed together with the rumen and the reticulum they move into the omasum. The omasum has bigger folds so it can pull water from the food to help keep the cow nice and hydrated. After that the food moves into the abomasum.
How your stomach works
What does your stomach actually do? When your food comes into your stomach, its already in pretty small pieces but it needs to be really teeny tiny in order for the body to use it for energy. Your body makes it smaller using stomach acid. Its a really tough liquidy substance that forces all the food to break down into the smallest pieces possible. This is also what happens in the final compartment called the abomasum in ruminants. So they once the food is small enough its ready to move into the intestines.
When the food arrives into the intestines, this is where you absorb your nutrients! Everything that you need to give you energy to run, make your muscles grow is taken up by your intestines!
Your guts and the guts of a ruminant are actually really similar so we can talk about them together! The intestines are divided into 2 categories: the small intestine and the large intestine. They are both important but have different roles.
The small intestine has 3 sections for the food to move through. Your small intestine is about 20 feet long! The intestines need to be this long in order to take up as many nutrients as possible. The main function of the small intestine is taking up nutrients for energy and making muscles.
The large intestines have 4 sections. This part of the intestines is absorption and taking it everything last little bit it can from the food you’ve eaten. So what comes out after the large intestine has absorbed everything it can? POOP! One of the main functions of the large intestine is making poop from anything the body didn’t need.
What food do ruminants eat?
Now that you know how humans and ruminants digestive systems are similar but also different. There are things Ruminants eat that we don’t and things that cows eat that we do eat!
Ruminants can eat a lot more plants than us because with all those 4 compartments it takes them a lot more time to break down those dense leaves. Ruminants can break down plants to make their own protein in their rumen, so they don’t need to eat any extra protein sources like meat, or eggs!
But humans like us aren’t able to do that. Our digestive system works a lot quicker so need to eat our own protein. Its important for growing kids like you to get lots of fruits and vegetables and also grains and protein so you can grow big and strong!
There are some foods that we can both eat but we just digest them differently; CORN is a great example of this. Ruminants can eat corn just like us! Corn is considered a grain so it can be a good source of energy. However, corn is a really dense source of grain and so ruminants spend a lot of time breaking it down into small pieces. Humans however, have a faster digestive system and don’t spend as much time breaking it down into teeny tiny pieces, which is why intact pieces of corn come out in human poop.
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