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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.
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 ...
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.
Because they spend 40% of their lives in the snow, reindeer have developed several unique adaptations. To help them stand on snow and squishy ground, their split-in-two cloven hooves provide traction.
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 ...
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.
In Leviticus they are described as lacking a split hoof and therefore not being kosher. It also describes the hyrax as chewing its cud, reflecting its observable ruminant-like mandible motions; the Hebrew phrase in question (מַעֲלֵה גֵרָה) means "bringing up cud". Some of the modern translations refer to them as rock hyraxes. [47] [48]
Various artiodactyls, representing all four suborders. Artiodactyla is an order of placental mammals composed of even-toed ungulates – hooved animals which bear weight equally on two of their five toes with the other toes either present, absent, vestigial, or pointing posteriorly – as well as their descendants, the aquatic cetaceans.