preview

Comparing The Digestive Systems Of A Carnivore

Better Essays

Comparing the digestive systems of a Carnivore, a hind gut fermenter and a ruminant In this report, I will be explaining the efficiency of the different digestive systems, the pros and cons of each digestive system, how all the food is broken down and how each digestive system is suitable for the type of animal. All of the digestive systems start with the mouth where the food enters first. The teeth in a carnivore’s mouth are designed to eat meat so they have evolved to have sharp and strong teeth, this makes it easy to rip and tear meat from bones of prey. This makes the carnivore more efficient at killing live prey than hindgut fermenters and ruminants. Hindgut fermenters teeth are designed to eat grains and grasses, for example a …show more content…

These parts evolved over time to suit the animal’s needs. For example, some ruminant’s lips are designed to be relatively immobile and use its tongue to grasp a clump of grass and then bite it off. Similarly, a hindgut fermenter uses its tongue to help grasp onto the plant and then uses its teeth and mouth to rip it out of the ground to eat. However, a carnivore’s food spends little time in the mouth so its lips and tongue isn’t used as much as the ruminants or hind gut fermenters. Before the food goes down the oesophagus, saliva in the animal’s mouth is used to help the food break down quicker and it’s used to moisten the food so it goes down the oesophagus better. As the animals were evolving, a ruminant’s saliva started to produce large amounts of alkaline saliva, which contains a little amylase to help break down starch, this is helpful for the ruminants as it can help break down their food a lot quicker in the mouth, whereas true carnivores do not have any digestive enzymes (amylase) in their saliva as they have a diet consisting of protein which amylase won’t break down. So this means the ruminant is more efficient at digesting starch than a carnivore as amylase is found in the saliva on non-ruminant herbivores and, to a lesser extent, carnivores as well. All animals of all digestive systems have an oesophagus. The oesophagus is a tube,

Get Access