The Grass Doctor

How does the plant eating animals manage to grow so big?

How can animals such as horse, cow or elephant, rhino, etc., grow so big by grazing and eating plants? Even if they eat a lot of grass, are there enough nutrients in the grass? how do they get enough calories to maintain their size? where do they get protein to grow big muscles like horses and buffaloes, or even deer? if animals can produce muscles by eating grass, how come meat eaters need protein to get big? How does this work?

Public Comments

1. That's easy. Proteins are made from amino acids. The problem we have is that we cannot synthesize every amino acid we need, so we have to get it from the food, that's why we have to eat meat. Herbivorous, however, can create those amino acids so they don't need to eat meet. They can because they have the necessary enzymes. On the other hand, there are a lot of plants with enough proteins, that's why vegetarians can survive. About the energy, herbivorous can digest the cellulose. They have some bacteria in their stomach that help them. Cellulose is a glucide, just like sugar, so they get from there all the energy. Apart from the fact that almost every plant has starch or fructose or any other glucides. They just work different than we omnivores do or carnivores. Hope this helped you.
2. These animals eat almost constantly in order to get nutrients from vegetation. An African Elephant can eat as much as 600 pounds of vegetation in a day. Carnivorous animals need different types of nutrients in order to function properly. Omniverous animals tend to lean mostly to one side or the other.