Science & Technology Group

  We were treated to a most interesting  talk on the digestive system of ruminants by John Parrett.  Totally at home in his subject matter, he spoke lucidly, was unfazed by any question, and used clear and informative diagrams.

  I had assumed that animals eating the same sort of diet would digest it similarly.  But no!!  Horses, it turns out, not only are silly enough to eat ragwort, but also have just the one stomach plus caecum {q.v.}. True ruminants - cows, sheep, goats and so on ( but not pigs) - utilise four compartments, including the massive fifty-gallon rumen, which can break down cellulose  in plants as well, and in so doing, recycle, as it were, the urea produced.

   Mind you, all this requires them to spend eight hours per day grazing and  to drink 25 gallons daily (and all  the herd at once, apparently!), helping to maintain the 45 gallons of saliva necessary for then sitting and chewing the cud.

  Camels and llamas have three stomachs, but we  humans do very poorly with our single one, managing merely to digest starch in its glucose form - 200 units altogether.

  Questions raised included the poisoning effect of buttercups, the issue of tripe - few takers, and the intriguing procedure of puncturing the rumen - as instanced in T Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd"; a  danger which arises when man allows his animals too rich food !

Gail Barnes