Digestion and Absorption in the Hindgut of Nonruminant Herbivores

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Abstract
Introduction What is an herbivore? According to Webster's dictionary (Anon, 1971), an herbivore is a plant eating mammal with a stout body and a long small intestine. Many zoologists consider herbivores to be those animals that eat plants in contrast to those that fed on meat or a mixture of both (Landry, 1970). Thus animals that eat seeds and fruits would be considered as herbivores. However in this paper, an herbivore will be defined as an animal (vertebrate or invertebrate) that can subsist on a diet consisting primarily of fibrous plant material. Nonruminant herbivores include a wide range of nonruminating species such as the hippopotamus, hamster, kangaroo, sloth and certain primates in which a voluminous, compartmentalized or sacculated stomach serves as the primary site of microbial activity (Moir, 1965; Kerr, 1972). But the majority of the nonruminant herbivores rely on the hind gut as the primary site of fermentation. The following discussion will deal with the latter group. Copyright © 1978. American Society of Animal Science . Copyright 1978 by American Society of Animal Science.

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