| Ruminantia | ||||||||||
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| Scientific classification | ||||||||||
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The biological suborder Ruminantia includes many of the well-known large grazing or browsing mammals: among them cattle, goats, sheep, deer, and antelope. All members of the Ruminantia are ruminants: they digest food in two steps, chewing and swallowing in the normal way to begin with, and then regurgitating the semi-digested cud to re-chew it and thus extract the maximum possible food value.
Note that not all ruminants belong to the Ruminantia. Camels and llamas are an obvious exception, and there are a number of other large grazing mammals that, while not strictly ruminants, have similar adaptations for surviving on large quantities of low-grade food. Kangaroos and horses are examples.