Why are cows so big if they are herbivores?

In the interest of fairness to the OP, I only think the second half of it is a stupid question, the first half is perfectly reasonable :D
 
Isn't it because they can synthesise their own protein and amino acid chains, where as we can only only do a little, and our diet is necessary to fill in the gaps.
Gorillas for instance are huge and only eat leaves.
 
It's handy being big if you're a herbivore.
It limits the number of preditors that are able to come and eat you!
 
ChroniC said:
Isn't it because they can synthesise their own protein and amino acid chains, where as we can only only do a little, and our diet is necessary to fill in the gaps.
Gorillas for instance are huge and only eat leaves.
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Gorillas are omnivores and eat more than just leaves, like bamboo, ants, termites, fruit etc depending where they are.

Koalas eat leaves though, and they're more cuddly.
 
Pudney said:
If the question is, "how does a cow's stomachs help it grow big", that's a good question for learning. If the question is "why don't humans just eat grass" then it's stupid.
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Can't both questions be answered exactly the same though?

sqrt(4) = 2
4-2 = 2

They might not be the same question, one requires a better starting knowledge, but if the answer is the same then what's the issue?
 
ChroniC said:
Isn't it because they can synthesise their own protein and amino acid chains, where as we can only only do a little, and our diet is necessary to fill in the gaps.
Gorillas for instance are huge and only eat leaves.
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Correct, I think its 12 Amino acids we are able to synthesise. All the others are required from diet although I suspect some flora bacteria are capable of synthesising others but don't quote me on that.

As for cows, No effin idea.
 
I was amazed recently to discover that grasses as a species haven't been around for very long.
I always had the idea that grasses were simple plants and always covered the face of the Earth, aparently not so, there were plants and trees, but not grasses as such until around 40 million years ago.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
I was amazed recently to discover that grasses as a species haven't been around for very long.
I always had the idea that grasses were simple plants and always covered the face of the Earth, aparently not so, there were plants and trees, but not grasses as such until around 40 million years ago.
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There was no grass when dinosaurs were around.

Another little fact I heard about lawns was that in the olden days in America, Scottish immigrants got so upset that they decided to make lawns to emulate the Scottish Highlands and that's why most of us have got them now.
Funnily enough not a day goes by when I don't look out of my window, look at my lawn and think 'What a waste of space'.
 
Nate Silvers said:
And horses too. Some of the biggest mammals don't eat meat so where do they get all their protein from?
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Plants, obviously. Herbivores eat a lot. Really big herbivores eat pretty much constantly, grazing most of the time they're awake.

Short version: animals are a far more efficient source of nutrition for other animals than plants are and a specialised digestive system is needed to be an efficient herbivore.

It's largely a matter of what an animal's digestive system is adapted to. full-on herbivores have a large, complicated digestive system that can slowly break down plant matter to extract nutrients from it. The most efficient herbivores even have multiple specialised stomach compartments and shuffle partly digested plant matter back and forth, even going as far as fermenting it and regurgitating and re-eating it ("chewing the cud").

Then there's the matter of the necessary enzymes to digest different things. If an animal doesn't have the right enzyme for something, it's not digestible to them regardless of how much they eat.

It's not a matter of protein, really. There are many different proteins, not one. A digestive system cuts them up into the amino acids that proteins are made from and the animal uses those amino acids to make its own proteins. Different animals can extract amino acids from different proteins and different animals can manufacture different amino acids from other things, so not all amino acids are needed from food.

I mean people eat beef to build muscle which is ironic because the cow didn't eat any beef. Why not cut out the middle man and go straight for the grass?
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Because humans can't digest grass. Even if we could (and we can't), we'd need to spend a large part of our waking lives grazing to survive. Given our size, I'd guess we'd need to be eating about 5 hours per day, every day, if we had a digestive system capable of efficiently digesting grass (which we don't).

A person can eat only plants and get all the amino acids they can't make themselves, enough of them to support the building of a lot of muscle if they do enough heavy exercise to earn that muscle, but not from grass. Humans are not herbivores, so thriving on a herbivorous diet requires a knowledgeably selected variety of plants in large enough quantities in order to offset the relatively inefficient human digestion of plants.
 
Pudney said:
It is stupid though, everyone knows that cows have four stomachs, by a simple step of logic you should be able to guess this is why they can only eat plants and humans don't have the required anatomy.

Edit: The horses is a better question, but again it should be immediately obvious they have evolutionary differences in digestion.
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You missed the point as it was about not having to eat meat to grow. Animals get protein from plant sources. The only reason that meat contains protein is because the animals eat plants with amino acids and those amino acids in their bodies cause their bodies to create other amino acids and together they are protein. It works that way in our bodies, too ( we're high protein).

Carnivore meat has protein because they eat animals that eat plants! That's why carnivores don't eat other carnivores. Apparently, carnivores will eat the intestines of their kill because that's where the nutrients are (the plants that the animal ate).

If you trackback where the protein in all meat comes from you would find it comes from the amino acids that come from plants as well as the amino acids that every body creates on it's own.

Argentinosaurus
argentinosaurushuincule.jpg



Angilion said:
Humans are not herbivores, so thriving on a herbivorous diet requires a knowledgeably selected variety of plants in large enough quantities in order to offset the relatively inefficient human digestion of plants.
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Are we not? We are the most intelligent species alive so I believe we do have the knowledge to select a varied diet which can beat an animal herbivores.

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Nate Silvers said:
Are we not?
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No, we are not herbivores. We are omnivores. This is not a radical or disputed thing.

Here, for example, is the Vegetarian Resource Group on the subject:

http://www.vrg.org/nutshell/omni.htm


We are the most intelligent species alive so I believe we do have the knowledge to select a varied diet which can beat an animal herbivores.
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In what way do you think that contradicts what I said?

Of course, we also need modern civilisation in order to have easy access to the necessary variety.
 
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