As far as I am aware, grazing animals like cows or sheep poop in the same meadows where they eat grass, but presumably don’t have any problems eating the grass and pooping in the same space. But if humans would eat vegetables that they had pooped on, my understanding is that we would get sick.
Why? Am I incorrect that grazing animals poop where they eat? Are their stomachs more resistant to whatever makes it dangerous?
Thank you!
My rabbits eat poop hay but not pee hay. They actually have special poops that they have to eat called cecotropes so I’m guessing their gut microbiome is more beneficial than ours. Also because they are hind gut fermenters, the bacteria necessary for the fermentation are probably different than the ones in our gut.
Yeah, rabbits as a species are not only tolerant to eating their own poop pellets but also gain calory extraction benefits from it. Usually mammals don’t completely break down food they eat, ie there is still energy to be gained from it. Microorganisms have the necessary biochemical pathways to do it but for mammals it’s not efficient.
Basically any animal has only a few ways to into crease its energy budget. First it can simply eat more or more rapidly. Second it can find ways to make use of resources that are less contested (think of a giraffe reaching for the top of a tree or a koala being able to digest eucalyptus leaves). Third it can simply be more efficient: that’s the slow metabolism of a sloth, but also a rabbit eating it’s own feces alongside fresh food. It’s basically an evolutionary strategy to extract more energy from the environment.