Silk Ball's Wake Up – Young White-tailed Deer and Snowshoe Hare

What do these two mammals of our forests have in common? A digestive system well adapted to their herbivorous diet. The white-tailed deer has a stomach with four compartments (the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum and the abomasum). The food travels down the compartments, returns to the mouth where it is chewed again, then returns to the compartments before reaching the intestine. Like the young white-tailed deer painted by Monique, all deer species ruminate.

The snowshoe hare uses a different strategy: coprophagy. The animal rejects excrement in the shape of a soft sphere which it ingests in order to recover nutrients produced in its intestine. These vitamins would otherwise be inaccessible to it. Then, the hare will reject dry droppings which it will not ingest. Have you noticed them in its hiding place under the small conifer?