Most villagers keep livestock, which makes it possible to always have fresh dairy products and meat. Some give birth to cows, while others prefer goats that are easier to care for. Not all people think about the physiological characteristics of pets.
And if the townspeople who arrived in the village are surprised at many things and make unexpected discoveries for themselves, then it is likely the children, having gotten closer to livestock, were the first to ask the ridiculous question of why a cow makes a crap and a goat a pea.
Features of nutrition and physiology
There are many secrets in nature, and sometimes a person does not think about some ordinary things. Do you know why a cow spoils a tortilla, and a goat peas? The reasons for the different shape and consistency of goat and cow excrement lie in some physiological characteristics of animals and their food preferences. In the process of evolution, then still domesticated cows were able to occupy the best pasture places for herbivores - green plains rich in lush grasses. Goats, on the other hand, were forced to adapt to desert, alpine, and steppe regions with fewer feeds and a lack of variety.
Having become less picky about food, goats are careful about the food that enters the stomach. For example, if a cow eats only 150 plant species out of 800 on natural pastures, then a goat from such a variety “will not disdain” 400 species! Moreover, her digestive tract tries to absorb maximum water and nutrients from the absorbed feed. Therefore, the physiological feature of a goat is the size of the intestine, which is 30 times longer than the animal itself, and in a cow, only 20 times. This explains why thinner cow excrement contains 77% water and dry goat excrement only 64%. You can guess why the cow spoils the tortilla, and the goat is peas.
The similarity of lifestyle of domestic cows and goats
There are many things in common in the lifestyle of domestic cows and goats. So, they all spend the night in a barn or crib, and spend daytime on the pastures of nearby meadows, fields, forests. Both cows and goats are herbivores that feed on grass or hay; both species drink water. In other words, animals are in approximately the same conditions.
Despite this, their excrement looks different. Taking a walk in the field, it is easy to determine who grazes on it: cows leave flat wide cakes, and goats are emptied by a bunch of small dense balls with a diameter of up to 2 centimeters. Manure of livestock is practically odorless and similar in composition. So why does a cow go with a tortilla, and a goat with peas?
Physiological features of the gastrointestinal tract of cows and goats
The body of the cow and goat are slightly different. The cow’s gastrointestinal tract does not absorb water from plant feed very intensely, so the digested food simply flows through it into the liquid mass and comes out in the form of a pool of manure, which when dried turns into a cake.
The digestive tract of smaller livestock - goats - almost completely absorbs water from absorbed food. Its residues, moving through the intestines, acquire a rounded shape, therefore, after emptying the animal, waste products remain in the form of separate dry dense balls. This is perhaps the surest explanation of why a cow spoils a tortilla, and a goat peas. And can there be other explanations for this fact?
Another possible reason
The following explanation of the differences in the shape and consistency of cattle manure is interesting. So, some scientists consider one of the reasons why a cow spoils a tortilla, and a goat a pea, elementary safety.
Judge for yourself: initially goats and sheep are inherent in most of their lives to gallop along high mountains and steep cliffs. And, perhaps, nature has specifically provided for their litter to be dry and small, because this will save the animals from the risk of slipping on their own feces and dying, plunging into the abyss. Well, such a version has a right to exist.
