Re: Why is the camel cosidered hind-gut fermentor and not a ruminant?

There is a lot of good information on the internet about camels. It may be helpful to know that they are in the family Camelidae (e.g. camel and llama). I am not familiar with the term pseudo-ruminate, but I can understand why they would be labeled as such. Pseudo means false and ruminate means the ingested food is fermented before it leaves the stomach. The camel does not ferment ingested food before it leaves the stomach, but it does regurgitate food and chew it again before it leaves the stomach. This is the same thing a cow does when it is chewing cud, food is regurgitated, chewed again, and swallowed. Following is some information I got off the internet, the addresses are listed at the bottom of the page. Rumen Physiology and Rumination Domesticated herbivores fall into two groups: (1) those with rumens (e.g. cattle, sheep and goats) in which extensive microbial fermentation of the plant diet occurs in a specialized region of the digestive tract prior to digestion by alimentary enzymes; and (2) those with simple stomachs (e.g. horse), in which microbial fermentation takes place in the distal part of the digestive tract. Herbivores need to maintain continuous fermentation and absorption in those parts of the GI tract where cellulose-containing materials can be broken down. Functional differences between species can be related to the rates at which digesta pass through the different parts of the tract. Efficient digestion (particularly microbial digestion) and absorption depend on an adequately slow movement of digesta through the tract; movement of digesta through the large intestine in a non-ruminant herbivore, such as the horse, is much slower than in a carnivore, such as the dog. Herbivores may be divided into ruminants and non- ruminants. Ruminants are the most diverse (about 155 species) and best known of herbivores in which extensive fermentation occurs before, rather than after, exposure to acidic gastric secretion. A ruminant-like fermentation also occurs in the Tragulidae (chevrotains) and Camelidae (e.g. camel and llama); members of these families have complex three-chambered stomachs. Other animals in which there is evidence for a complex cellulose-digesting microbial population in the foregut include hippopotamuses, tree sloths, leaf-eating monkeys of the subfamily Colobinae, and the macropod marsupials (e.g. kangaroos). http://www.physiol.cam.ac.uk/staff/findlay/giintro.htm http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/herbivores/rumina tion.html