How Do enormous animals like giraffes/elephants/ect meet basic nutrition needs when they dont have a varied diet?

Question

How Do enormous animals like giraffes/elephants/ect meet basic nutrition needs when they dont have a varied diet?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Different animals have different digestive systems.

One major difference is what amino acids their digestive systems are capable of producing on its own. This is referred to as the Essential Amino Acids. Amino Acids are the building blocks of proteins and there are about 22 of them. The human body can only make about 6 of them on its own. The other 15 need to be obtained by eating them.

But this number varies from animal to animal. Some animals can produce almost all the amino acids on their own. Some need to eat more than humans.

Herbivores tend to produce more of the amino acids on their own. Carnivores less.

Answer 2

Volume.

Cows plow through 25ish pounds of feed a day, and Elephants consume *hundreds* of pounds a day. The infamous “white elephant” refers to a legend where the King of Siam gifted these elephants to nobles he hated, knowing the care would bankrupt them.

The food they eat is mostly nutritional trash, so they’ve evolved enormous digestive systems to process huge volumes and extract what little nutrients exist in grass and stems.

Answer 3

They are herbivores, and we are omnivores. Varied diet is necessary for omnivores. Herbivores do not have this requirement. They survive just fine on grass alone.

Answer 4

Adding to the other comments: they get microbes to do the work for them. Pretty much any large herbivore is going to have some part of their digestive tract devoted to fermentation. Bacteria and protozoa use the plant material to produce energy for themselves. As they grow they produce fats, proteins, carbohydrates, etc – either released into the gut or incorporated into their own (the microbes’) cells. Then the animal digests the microbes and gets the nutrients it needs. So instead of needing to eat a varied diet of different foods to get different nutrients, the herbivore can eat the same thing for a long time because it is growing a varied population of microbes inside its digestive tract.