CBSE Class 7 Answered
Ruminants such as cow, deer and goat eat mainly grass and other plant leaves as food. Grass is rich in carbohydrates called cellulose which is a quite tough material and difficult to digest. These animals have cellulose-digesting bacteria present in their stomach which helps to digest cellulose. They quickly swallow the grass and store it in the rumen, where the food gets partially digested and is termed cud. The cud returns to the mouth in small lumps and the animal chews it. This process is termed rumination, and these animals are called ruminants.
Ruminants primarily feed on grass and other plant material. Through rumination, they ferment the food and regurgitate and chew their food before the main digestion. Therefore, ruminants require multi-chambered (four-chambered) stomach for these processes to be carried out in a step-wise manner. Because of these reasons, the ruminants digest their food in two steps.