60
Why aren't we evolved to eat grass?
(literature.cafe)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
60 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
53902 readers
422 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
Not after chicken nuggies tho?
Yeah, that was the lazy answer. The more correct is, because grass contains stuff (mainly lignin, reminds me of this i found this morning) that's hard to digest with a normal stomach. So cows & co. have multiple gastric ... sections(? Mägen), the first of which contains microrganisms specialized in breaking down lignin. The following gastrics are more the usual bio-chemical kind, to digest the microorganisms.
In short, eating grass needs a specialized process and you can't eat anything else as main food source, (they do occasionally eat a chicken or critter).