Both a cow and a horse eat the same food,and survive equally well.Why a cow lacks teeth on upper front jaw??

It should be realised that these animals eat the same type of food,exist side by side and survive equally very well.On the upper front jaw of the cow,there is no teeth and yet the horse has teeth on its upper front jaw. Please help.

Both a cow and a horse eat the same food,and survive equally well.Why a cow lacks teeth on upper front jaw??
Cows and horses both have incisors, as far as I know. perhaps the cow you saw was injured.





The two animals differ the most in how they digest grass. A cow swallows grass whole, ferments it in its stomach and then regurgitates it. It then chews it up with the molars and swallows it a second time. At this point, the grass is finally digested. The fermentation process in the cow's stomach breaks down the grass fibers into carbohydrates the cow can digest. Horses chew grass thoroughly before swallowing and don't regirgitate. The food passes through their stomach and a special section of the large intestine is modified to absorb nutrients. Horses don't regirgitate "cud" like cows, goats and sheep do.





Some species of rhinocerous don't have front teeth. It makes grazing easier because the rhino uses its lips to pull the grass up. The molars then grind the food. Molars are far more important to herbivores than incisors are and a cow with no front teeth could survive perfectly well. Elephant's incisors are their tusks and can't chew food at all. An elephant dies of starvation when it looses the last of its molars. Cainine teeth are very important to preditors, but nearly all herbivores lack them. One exception is the male cammal which has small cainines. Pigs are technically omnivores, but are distantly related to cows and sheep. The tusks of a boar are its cainine teeth.
Reply:Horses use their teeth to accomplish the same thing that a cow's multiple stomachs are for: breaking down cellulose and other plant fibers for digestion. Cows and other ruminants use their multiple stomachs to chemically break down vegetation, while horses do a more complete job of chewing and have large intestines adapted to process cellulose.
Reply:Because cows and horses have different stomachs and they need to digest their food differently. Horses need to break up their food better and cows dont. Cow have something like 5 stomaches.
Reply:no doubt they eat th same food but they hav different stomachs....cow has a complex stomach divided into 4 parts whereas horse has simple stomach like humans. one shud remember that cow is ruminating animal whereas horse is not.