Ruminants show a special behavior when eating: They swallow their plant food roughly chewed, then regurgitate it several times and continue chewing. This has a decisive advantage, as a research team with participation from the University of Göttingen has shown: The regurgitated food mush contains fewer hard silicates from sand and dust than the food initially ingested. As a result, the teeth are not ground down as much during chewing. This may explain why ruminants’ dental crowns are less pronounced than those of other herbivores. The findings appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). ...
