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According to these, any animal which "chews the cud" (e.g., consumes vegetation and later regurgitates it into the mouth to be re-processed and more efficiently digested) and has a completely split hoof (cloven-foot) is ritually clean, but those which only chew the cud or only have cloven hooves are unclean.
The order Artiodactyla consists of 349 extant species belonging to 132 genera. This does not include hybrid species or extinct prehistoric species. Modern molecular studies indicate that the 132 genera can be grouped into 23 families; these families are grouped into named suborders and many are further grouped into named clades, and some of these families are subdivided into named subfamilies.
Cloven hooves of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), with dewclaws. The hoof is the tip of the toe of an ungulate mammal, strengthened by a thick horny covering. The hoof consists of a hard or rubbery sole, and a hard wall formed by a thick nail rolled around the tip of the toe. Both the sole and the edge of the hoof wall normally bear the weight ...
Perissodactyla is an order of placental mammals composed of odd-toed ungulates – hooved animals which bear weight on one or three of their five toes with the other toes either present, absent, vestigial, or pointing backwards. Members of this order are called perissodactyls, and include rhinoceroses, tapirs, and horses.
Reindeer antlers tend to be massive compared to the animal’s body, while regular deer have a more balanced antler-to-body ratio. ... and their hooves are larger and split in such a way it allows ...
By these requirements, any land-dwelling animal that is kosher can only possibly be a mammal, but even then, permitted are only those mammals that are placentals and strictly herbivorous (not omnivores nor carnivores) that both ruminate and also have cloven hooves, such as bovines (cattle/cows, bison, buffalos, yak, etc.), sheep, goats, deer ...
Other cloven-hooved animals (such as giraffes and pronghorns) have no dewclaws. In some so-called "cloven-hooved" animals, such as camels, the "hoof" is not properly a hoof – it is not a hard or rubbery sole with a hard wall formed by a thick nail – instead it is a soft toe with little more than a nail merely having an appearance of a hoof.
The most likely ancestors were long thought to be mesonychians—large, carnivorous animals from the early Cenozoic (Paleocene and Eocene), which had hooves instead of claws on their feet. Their molars were adapted to a carnivorous diet, resembling the teeth in modern toothed whales , and, unlike other mammals, had a uniform construction.