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Hindgut fermentation is a digestive process seen in monogastric herbivores (animals with a simple, single-chambered stomach). Cellulose is digested with the aid of symbiotic microbes including bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. [1] The microbial fermentation occurs in the digestive organs that follow the small intestine: the cecum and large ...
Being hindgut fermenters, these animals ferment cellulose in an enlarged cecum. In smaller hindgut fermenters of the order Lagomorpha (rabbits, hares, and pikas), and Caviomorph rodents ( Guinea pigs , capybaras , etc.), material from the cecum is formed into cecotropes , passed through the large intestine, expelled and subsequently reingested ...
Great apes derive significant amounts of phytanic acid from the hindgut fermentation of plant materials. [5] Monogastrics cannot digest the fiber molecule cellulose as efficiently as ruminants, though the ability to digest cellulose varies amongst species. [2] A monogastric digestive system works as soon as the food enters the mouth.
All perissodactyls are hindgut fermenters. In contrast to ruminants, hindgut fermenters store digested food that has left the stomach in an enlarged cecum, where the food begins digestion by microbes, with the fermentation continuing in the large colon. No gallbladder is present. The stomach of perissodactyls is simply built, while the cecum ...
Horses are non-ruminant herbivores of a type known as a "hindgut fermenter." Horses have only one stomach, as do humans. Horses have only one stomach, as do humans. However, unlike humans, they also need to digest plant fiber (largely cellulose ) that comes from grass or hay .
The anaerobic fermentation in the cecum breaks down the fiber into useable food for the animal. It is also used as food for the proliferating microbes. The results of the fermentation are volatile fatty acids (VFAs), all of the B vitamins, vitamin K, microbial proteins, essential amino acids and minerals.
Like ruminants, some pseudoruminants may use foregut fermentation to break down cellulose in fibrous plant species (while most others are hindgut fermenters with a large cecum). But they have three-chambered stomachs (while others are monogastric) as opposed to ruminant stomachs which have four compartments.
The hindgut (or epigaster) is the posterior part of the alimentary canal. In mammals, it includes the distal one third of the transverse colon and the splenic flexure, the descending colon, sigmoid colon and up to the ano-rectal junction. In zoology, the term hindgut refers also to the cecum and ascending colon.