>>I thought that too, until I read an article years ago in the CNRS entitled
>>"Do rabbits Chew their Cud?" In the article the authors points out that
>>rabbits do indeed chew their cud, but they do so by a rather devious
>>process. The lagomorphs ingest vegetative material that would yield no
>>more nourishment to them than it would to us. THe rabbits then sequester
>>the material in the caecum where it is mixed with chyme and protozoa that
>>digest cellulose, that apparently live there. At a specific time each day,
>>the rabbits void anally a special pellet from the caecum which is this
>>digested material taken in fresh (grass, etc.). These pellets are then
>>ingested, masticated, and swallowed, whereupon they bypass the caecum, and
>>digestion is completed via the rectum in the normal manner.
>>Apparently science has finally caught up with what has been known for
>>centuries, not only in the Bible, but rabbit owners know that if these
>>pellets are lost to the rabbit (as by a wire cage floor), the rabbits will
>>not flourish.
>>
>
>I left all those details out because they were not germaine to my point: a
>fecal pellet is still not a cud, no matter how much it might resemble one
>(and believe me, they don't look anything like cuds; they look more like
>regular rabbit stools and the only way to tell the difference is to examine
>them microscopically). Once again, a cud is food regurgitated from the
>first stomach of a ruminant directly back to the mouth while a fecal pellet
>is anally excreted, then reingested. There are also important differences
>in structure, in composition and in microflora content between a cud and a
>fecal pellet. I don't care how much rhetorical torture some creationists
>use, they cannot make a fecal pellet into a cud.
It was not creationists, but scientists in the French National Academy that
suggested this, Kevin. (The citation should have been CRNS).
Art
http://geology.swau.edu