Скачать или смотреть Late Night "Cud Chew"

This young bull is resting and having a nice hour and a half cud chew. Turn the volume up to maximum and you can hear his teeth grinding. For more info see below.

Moose are Ruminants like domestic cows. This means that they have four stomachs and need to re-chew their food to break it down further before it passes on through their system. Growing up on a small farm I saw a lot of cud chewing. Moose need to consume a large amount of "Roughage" food every day. In summer a lot of the feeding is done in evening and nighttime because it is cooler. This food consists of vast amounts of mainly leaves, twigs and tree bark. And in ponds cat-tail shoots, Lilly pads and underwater aquatic plants that they will actually dive to the bottom to retrieve.

The moose's large upper lip is prehensile, which means it is flexible for wrapping around and grasping tree branches, They have no top front teeth just a tough mouth plate which they use their bottom incisors against to snip off the branches. They have huge pointed top and bottom molars that mesh together for grinding all of that food.

The food is initially swallowed as it is gathered with little chewing. Then later cud balls of food are each regurgitated and pressed against the roof of the mouth to expel any liquids and re-chewed. This process helps to break down the heavy browse into more surface area for microbes and enzymes to work at digesting it. Unlike our stomachs, the strong digestive acids are only present in the lower sections of the moose's stomach. Large amounts of Saliva (from cud chewing) also play a large role in the ruminants digestion.

If you are interested in a more detailed explanation on this, I found an excellent article on the subject. (I learned a lot from it) I don't want to leave the link because not sure if its permitted.
But just search: Ruminant Digestive Anatomy and Function February 2011 and you'll find the link.
Its from a Mississippi university....NBMooselovers