More of the Scoop on Ruminant Poop (and Other Digestive Specialities)

This February 2025, while out with the Tracking Apprenticeship Group near Bell’s Lake, Grey County, we started using some terms for which I’m not totally clear of the meaning. I’d like to unpack them and share my learning here with you.

The words are rumen, cecal scat, ruminant and ungulate.

After a quick look up, I learn that an ungulate is simply an animal that has hooves. Horses, cows, deer and moose are all examples of ungulates.

While all ruminants are ungulates, not all ungulates are ruminants.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, ruminants are animals where food is ingested, held in the rumen, and then brought back up into the mouth to be chewed again. More specifically, they are herbivorous, even-toed, hoofed mammals (suborder Ruminantia and Tylopoda) that have complex 3- or 4-chambered stomachs. Examples of wild mammals in Ontario that are ruminants include deer, moose, elk, and caribou.

Moose are ruminants

When ruminants eat, they ingest their browse and after a very quick chew it is held in their rumen (the largest of their stomachs) where the cellulose fibers begin to be broken down by bacteria through fermentation. This material is then formed into balls (the cud) in the reticulum, which the animal chews a second time before swallowing, sending it down into the rest of the stomach for further digestion.

So the rumen is basically a fermentation tank for plant fibers. It makes sense then that we often find the contents of rumen in the prey remains from deer and moose; it is the largest chamber of the stomach and holds the biggest volume in proportion to the rest of their digestive tract (up to five gallons in a mature domestic cow). When a carnivore is consuming a ruminant, there is a lot of fluid and plant fibers in the rumen that they cannot digest and are left as waste.

Ruminants and most other animals including humans, have another stomach chamber that also helps break down tough plant fibers and this is called the caecum (cecum). It is the final chamber before waste is excreted. Like the rumen, the caecum allows for fermentation and nutrient and water absorption.

Learning how ruminants digest their food makes me wonder about porcupines, snowshoe hare and beaver.

According to a research paper from the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, beavers do have a caecum, close to the end of their digestive tract like ruminants, but they don’t have a rumen, and don’t chew the cud. Like rabbits and hare, however, they accomplish the task of breaking down cellulose and other plant fibers by being coprophagic. Coprophagy is when an animal passes stool after quickly consuming their food, and then re-ingests it in a safer restful situation where it can be chewed up more finely to allow for better digestion. It kind of serves the same function the rumen and reticulum. According to Dr. Uldis Roze, Professor Emeritus, in the Department of Biology, Queens College, porcupines, who have a relatively larger caecum, are generally not considered to be coprophagic.

Snowshoe hare are coprophagic

My final question relates to the caecal scat we often find from grouse. Do they have a caecum like ruminant mammals? Why do they have two different scats (the dry, fibrous kind and the goopy caecal kind (that looks kind of like caramel).

From what I was able to find online, most birds have two caeca, called cecal pouches. This division of the caecum is an adaptation to aid in their ability to fly.

While I did not find specific information on the cecal scats of grouse, I was able to find information relating to domestic hens, which are similar. The cecal sacs are emptied by both chickens and grouse when they become full of indigestible plant material in order to make room for other material as the birds eat. In the ruminants discussed earlier, the caecal contents are mixed in the regular faeces produced by the animal. In birds, they are excreted separately.

Ruffed grouse

Dry and caecal grouse scat

I am pleased to have learned more about these digestive processes and hope it is new learning to some of you as well. It is only scratching the surface, but when it comes to digging into poop, it seems to be prudent to be conservative in how much I bite off at a time!!