> Date:    Fri, 9 Mar 2007 14:58:57 -0500
> From:    Keith Thomas <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: OT: Meat-loving calf eats chickens
> Rabbits don't have a rumen, and their food goes through their system fair=
> ly quickly.  The bugs get=20
> to work on the faeces which the rabbits then eat, making rabbits a sort o=
> f omnivore

*** Rabbits do not eat feces, they eat caecotropes, but I suppose if you 
consider bacteria to be animals, rabbits are sort of omnivores.

> There are true vegetarians (horses, rhinos, elephants, kangaroos etc).  If 
> one of these non-ruminants starts eating meat that would be amazi=
> ng

*** So, horses, for example, utilize hind-gut fermentation rather than 
foregut fermentation like ruminants, but how does that differ very much from 
other hindgut fermenters like rabbits, guinea pigs, chinchillas, etc.? Adult 
horses do not eat caecotropes, but foals do eat mare's feces to establish 
hindgut bacterial populations...

--Carrie