Nadya Alfi Fauziyah

Human and Ruminant Digestive System

        Two years ago, when I was in the second grade of senior high school I was learned about digestive system in my biology class. My teacher, Mrs. Asri Istiana was explaining about human and animal digestive system. It is very interesting, moreover the digestive system of cow called ruminant. Why? because it is the most unique process than the other does. The explanation below will give you more information about why ruminant should work twice for doing digestion than human.

        An adult human and ruminant has the same number of teeth, all of them are 32 teeth. Even though they have similarities about the number of the teeth there are some differences which described in the chart below.

          Ruminant teeth’s structure

3	3	0	0	0	0	0	0	Upper jawbone
M	P	C	I	I	C	P	M	Types of teeth
3	3	0	4	4	0	3	3	Lower jawbone

           Human teeth’s structure

3	2	1	2	2	1	2	3	Upper jawbone
M	P	C	I	I	C	P	M	Types of teeth
3	2	1	2	2	1	2	3	Lower jawbone

I = incisor
C = canine
P = premolar
M = molar

The chart showed us about the structure of the human and ruminant teeth. as you see, all of number are different for example ruminant doesn’t have any canines and upper incisors (0) but they have more molar and premolar teeth, why? Because they need those teeth for chewing fibrous foods such as leaves and grass. This is also a reason why ruminant don’t need to have canines teeth because they don’t eat any meat like human does.

        Ingestion and digestion process of human and ruminant are similar, after human doing ingestion the bolus (a pellet of food) will move through the gullet (oesophagus) to the stomach and move again through the intestines and out through the anus. But, you will find the different thing from ruminant digestive process like the stomach. This is different with human’s stomach because it is big and consists of 4 parts, those are: rumen as the receiving station of the food, reticulum as the place for chemical process which changed the food become bolus, omasum will grind the food after ruminant re-chew the bolus, abomasum is the last part of the stomach which will digest the food using bacteria to produce enzyme cellulose.

        From all of explanation above, we know that human and ruminant are similar. Both of them are mammal, they have same respiratory organ system, they have little bit differences in digestive organ system, same number of teeth but not the structure and they don’t have same stomach, they have to work twice (chewing their food) for completing their digestion so that’s why the way ruminant eat is different with human.