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While foregut fermentation is generally considered more efficient, and monogastric animals cannot digest cellulose as efficiently as ruminants, [5] hindgut fermentation allows animals to consume small amounts of low-quality forage all day long and thus survive in conditions where ruminants might not be able to obtain nutrition adequate for their needs.
However, their ability to extract energy from cellulose digestion is less efficient than in ruminants. [2] Herbivores digest cellulose by microbial fermentation. Monogastric herbivores which can digest cellulose nearly as well as ruminants are called hindgut fermenters, while ruminants are called foregut fermenters. [3]
Some animals, particularly ruminants and termites, can digest cellulose with the help of symbiotic micro-organisms that live in their guts, such as Trichonympha. In human nutrition, cellulose is a non-digestible constituent of insoluble dietary fiber, acting as a hydrophilic bulking agent for feces and potentially aiding in defecation.
A large percentage of herbivores also have mutualistic gut flora made up of bacteria and protozoans that help to degrade the cellulose in plants, [1] whose heavily cross-linking polymer structure makes it far more difficult to digest than the protein- and fat-rich animal tissues that carnivores eat.
Once converted to CO 2, plants can again perform photosynthesis and fix that carbon back into cellulose. From here, cattle can eat the plants and the cycle begins once again. In essence, the methane belched from cattle is not adding new carbon to the atmosphere. Rather it is part of the natural cycling of carbon through the biogenic carbon ...
White fat cells secrete many proteins acting as adipokines such as resistin, adiponectin, leptin and apelin. An average human adult has 30 billion fat cells with a weight of 30 lbs or 13.5 kg. If a child or adolescent gains sufficient excess weight, fat cells may increase in absolute number until age twenty-four. [3]
Acute rumen acidosis can lead to death of the animal, and will occur if the animal is allowed to eat a diet with no roughage but high levels of highly digestible starchy concentrate. Some dairy cows in intensive systems of milk production may have sub-acute acidosis because of the high rates of cereals in their diets relative to an insufficient ...
Cellulose is a polymer made with repeated glucose units bonded together by beta-linkages. Humans and many animals lack an enzyme to break the beta-linkages, so they do not digest cellulose. Certain animals, such as termites can digest cellulose, because bacteria possessing the enzyme are present in their gut. Cellulose is insoluble in water.