What are ruminant animals?

The term ruminant refers to chewing grass or cud. When an animal chews cud, that means that the animal chews and then swallows the grass. Then the animal chews that again and swallows it again. There are many animals who eat grass and then do this process of re-eating the swallowed grass again. Some of these ruminant animals include cows, goats, sheep, deer, gazelles, giraffes and antelopes.

The reason that they can eat, swallow and eat the same grass again is due to their stomachs. Cows are known to have four different stomachs. They can chew the grass again due to their digestion system. As a matter of fact, “ruminant” is Latin and it means “to chew over again.” Ruminant animals can both be wild or tame.

There are a lot of people who are not too familiar with what ruminant animals are. Ruminant animals are those who regurgitate their food more than once. They have to chew their food more than once too. The food will be digested in various stomachs in order to get the best nutrients that the animals can get.

Animals like this usually have four different stomachs with varying functions. What are the ruminant animals? Some examples of ruminant animals are the following: giraffes, sheep, camels, buffalo, and cattle. You would see that there are some similarities with these animals such as their even toes and their even hoods. They also usually chew on cud.