Herbivorous animals: list and curiosities

What are herbivorous animals and what role do they play in the food chain? List and curiosity of the so-called "primary consumers". The category of herbivores includes all those animals that feed exclusively on food of plant origin. It is a transversal category, which includes vertebrates and invertebrates, mammals, insects, reptiles and birds.



What are the herbivorous animals and what role do they play in the food chain? List and curiosities of the so-called "primary consumers"



- herbivorous animals they are the ones who feed exclusively on foods of plant origin. There are many of them in nature: they range from extremely small organisms such as earthworms to mammoth elephants, from aquatic mammals such as manatees or dugongs, to insects such as bees, from tame animals such as koalas to aggressive ones such as rhinos.

This classification, in fact, is purely descriptive and does not fall within the category of traditional taxonomy, but intersects the different classes into which the animal kingdom is generally divided in a transversal way. There category of herbivores, therefore, includes both invertebrate and vertebrate animals, includes numerous mammals but also birds, insects and even some species of reptiles.


Index

name="herbivores-in-the-food-chain">Herbivores in the food chain

The common feature of herbivores is that of being primary consumers, located at the lowest rungs of the food chain. These animals are placed immediately after plants, which are primary producers and autotrophic organisms, that is, self-sufficient because they are able to obtain food on their own, through chlorophyll photosynthesis.

Herbivores, on the other hand, are heterotrophic animals, since they feed on substances produced by others, specifically by plants, transforming the vegetable substance (cellulose) into glycogen, a compound of animal origin. Glycogen molecules are available to feed predatory and carnivorous animals, which feed on herbivores and are located at the next step in the food chain.


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name="why-some-herbivores-are-so-big">Why some herbivores are so big

It is not surprising that herbivores often reach considerable dimensions: the elephant, for example, is the largest terrestrial mammal and can reach a height of 4 meters and a weight of 7 tons. But the hippopotamus or the rhinoceros are also impressive animals.


This is because they eat a lot and are located at the lower rungs of the food chain, where they have a large amount of energy. The higher you go up the food chain, the higher the energy consumption. In practice, herbivores manage to capitalize on food that they ingest, drawing the maximum possible nourishment from it.

In the transition from one level to the next, there is a noticeable loss of energy. For this reason, a carnivore that hypothetically was the same size as an elephant, would have to spend all its time hunting and eating prey, without interruption, only to be able to draw on the same amount of energy available to the herbivore.

After some time, however, the prey would run out and the animal would have nothing left to hunt. Herbivores, therefore, are indispensable animals for the complex balance of the ecosystem, since, among other things, their existence is functional to the continuity of the food chain.

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name="categories-of-herbivores">Categories of herbivores

One of the characteristics that these animals have in common is that of having eyes located on the sides of the head, so you can easily spot the possible presence of predators.

As regards the differences between the individual species of herbivores, however, some general distinctions can be made, with the aim of facilitating their study and simplifying their classification.

First, herbivores can be distinguished based on what they eat. Based on this criterion, we will have three different groups, namely:

  • frugivores: they are all those animals that feed mainly or exclusively on fruits
  • folivori: animals that feed mainly on leaves belong to this category
  • granivori: they are animals that eat mainly seeds, and mostly birds.

However, this distinction is not always very precise, especially due to the impossibility of rigidly pigeonholing a specific animal in one group rather than another. In fact, herbivores generally eat all parts of a plant, including stem, seeds and roots.


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Herbivores and the problem of digestion of cellulose

Another criterion for distinguishing herbivores is to take them into consideration organs suitable for chewing of food and the digestive system of animals. The main problem for herbivores has always been that of digest cellulose present in plants. In fact, to assimilate this vegetable fiber, the cellulase, an enzyme that is not present in any multicellular organism.

For its synthesis, in the course of evolution, herbivorous animals have developed a symbiotic relationship with bacteria located within their intestines. This relationship is mutually beneficial for both: the microorganisms produce cellulase and in return derive nourishment from it.

Cellulase synthesis takes place within a specific fermentation chamber, which can be located in the posterior or anterior intestine.

Another technique that herbivores have developed to facilitate the assimilation of cellulose concerns the mechanical digestion of the leaves, perfected through the development of a particular set of teeth.

Herbivorous rodents and ruminants

Therefore, according to the location of the fermentation chamber, a factor that also determines the relative conformation of the stomach, as well as according to the characteristics of the teeth, we can distinguish two macro groups of herbivores:

  • rodents: they have very developed incisors, which allow them to nibble on fruit and chop the leaves. The cellulose fermentation chamber is located in the posterior intestine, in a blind-bottomed bag placed at the confluence of the small and large intestines. This circumstance determines the production of feces which are very rich in products of microbial origin. For this reason, among the lagomorphs (rabbits and hares), the practice of coprophagia, that is to eat their own feces, is widespread. Koala cubs also feed on their mother's feces for a long time.
  • ruminants: they have the fermentation bag placed in the anterior intestine, the so-called rumen. These animals are also defined polygastric, because they are characterized by the presence of several stomachs, or rather by a stomach that has been adapted and divided into three or 4 portions. Ruminants in the strict sense, namely mainly Bovids and Cervids, have the stomach divided into 4 pockets: rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum. The stomach of the Camelids, on the other hand, is made up of only three pouches. These herbivores can feed on good quality pastures, with grasses undergoing a long and laborious digestive process. Digestion, however, occurs mainly in the anterior compartment of the intestine, in the so-called rumen.

Within the category of herbivores we can also identify monophagous animals, that is, that they feed exclusively on a vegetable. Examples are thekoala and panda, which respectively feed on only eucalyptus leaves or sun bamboo sticks.

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Herbivores, list

As mentioned, there are many herbivorous animals. An exhaustive list of individual specimens is almost impossible, but we can identify the main species that are part of it. Herbivores include:

  • Bovidi (cow, sheep, goat, buffalo, antelope, mouflon, bison, gazelle, dik-dik, impala, chamois, ibex, lichi, yak, nyala, oryx)
  • Equidi (horse, donkey and zebra)
  • Cervidae (deer, reindeer, caribou, elk, roe deer, fallow deer)
  • Camelids (camel, dromedary, llama, guanaco, alpaca and vicuna)
  • Giraffidi (giraffe and okapi)
  • Pachyderms (tapir, rhino, hippo, elephant)
  • Lagomorphs (hares and rabbits)
  • Marsupials (kangaroo and koala)
  • Aquatic mammals (dugongo and lamantino)
  • Rodents (porcupine, beaver, porcupine, squirrel, mouse, marmot, nutria and capybara)
  • Primates (gorilla and orangutan)
  • Birds (duck, blackcap, parrot, canary)
  • Insects (bee, grasshopper, cicada, butterfly)
  • Sloth
  • Iguana
  • Earthworm
  • Panda
  • Tartaruga
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Little known herbivores

Scrolling through the list of herbivores, many animals are familiar because we actually know them closely or because, although exotic, we have known them at school or through travel. Then there are animals that perhaps turn out to be completely unknown to us.

THEimpala for example it is a mammal belonging to the bovidae family. It lives in the savannahs of southern Africa and its survival is threatened by indiscriminate hunting.

Il flame is an African antelope that lives in the region between Malawi and South Africa.

Il sis dik instead it is a small East African antelope.

Always talking about antelopes, theany is a large antelope that lives in Namibia. This mammal has a cooling system that protects it when the outside temperature reaches 45 degrees, a condition that would be lethal to other mammals.

Il capybara it is the largest rodent in the world, weighing up to 65 kilos. Its habitat is represented by the humid regions of South America. It lives in flocks of 6 to 20 specimens and spends its time mainly in water.

Among all, theokapi it is perhaps the most unique animal. Very close to the giraffe, although it has a much shorter neck. It has a brown body and black and white striped front and rear legs, of a size that is very reminiscent of that of zebras. You can see it in the following photo.

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Curiosities about herbivores

Observing these animals closely, one is always fascinated by their habits and their way of life. There are many curiosities concerning them. For reasons of space, we report only a few:

  • If you lift the tail of a kangaroo, this animal is no longer able to jump, because the tail performs the balancing function of the body.
  • There are no 2 zebras with identical stripes and this is essential to blend in with the eyes of predators, who cannot recognize which animal they had aimed at.
  • Many elephants weigh less than a blue whale's tongue.
  • Squirrels are extremely forgetful animals. But thanks to this characteristic, they are able to reforest the environment in which they live. In fact, new trees are born from the acorns that they disseminate in immediately forgotten places.
  • It often happens to see butterflies linger for a few minutes resting on the flowers, while moving their legs. Well, these extraordinary insects are able to taste the nectar of flowers right through their paws.
  • Rabbits are elusive animals. They are able to escape predators because they have a 360 degree view.
  • Sheep are capable of self-medicating. When they get sick, they select the plants and herbs that are best suited to treat that specific ailment.
  • Giraffes give birth standing up. When they come to light, their cubs make a flight of 1 meters, even 2 meters often. After an hour, however, the baby giraffes are perfectly capable of walking.
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  • Zebras communicate… with their ears. That's right. They express their emotions and feelings by changing the position of their ears.
  • Hippo sweat is red because it contains a particular pigment of this color. This molecule is also contained in their milk. As a result, hippos are the only mammals to produce pink milk.
  • The rhino has a superlative sense of smell. It can be seen suddenly charging into the savannah because its nose has warned it of some very distant and invisible threat.
  • The gut of the hippo can reach 60 meters in length.
  • A worker bee lives on average 40 to 50 days. The queen bee, on the other hand, can live much longer, even up to 4 years.
  • The koala does not drink water, because it derives everything it needs to live from eucalyptus leaves, the only food it eats. The word koala is of aboriginal derivation and means precisely "he who does not drink".
  • To mark the territory, the dik-dik cry real tears.
  • Elephants can smell water even three kilometers away. This feature is very useful for survival in particularly arid environments, where water resources are scarce.
  • Beaver teeth never stop growing - they increase by about 2-3 millimeters per week. To keep them at their normal length, these animals are forced to continually gnaw on tree trunks and branches.
  • The spermatozoa of the mouse are larger than those of the elephant.

Angela Petrella

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