Herbivores — Reading Comprehension Lesson

Reading Passage

Herbivores

Herbivores are animals that eat only plants. They include some of the largest and most familiar animals on Earth — elephants, horses, cows, deer, rabbits, and many others. Herbivores play a critical role in ecosystems because they transfer energy stored in plants to the animals that eat them. Without herbivores, the energy locked in vegetation would not be available to carnivores and omnivores higher in the food chain.

Herbivores have evolved specialized teeth and digestive systems to process plant material. Plants are tough to digest because their cell walls are made of cellulose, a complex carbohydrate that most animals cannot break down. Grazing herbivores like cows and deer have flat, broad molars for grinding tough grasses and leaves. Many herbivores are ruminants — they have multi-chambered stomachs and re-chew partially digested food, called cud, to extract maximum nutrition. Rabbits take a different approach and eat some of their own droppings to digest food a second time.

Herbivores can be divided into browsers and grazers. Grazers, such as horses, zebras, and bison, feed mainly on grasses close to the ground. Browsers, such as giraffes, deer, and moose, feed on leaves, twigs, and bark of shrubs and trees. Some animals do both depending on the season. The difference matters ecologically: grazers shape grasslands while browsers influence the structure of forests and shrublands.

Because they do not hunt, herbivores must be constantly alert to avoid predators. Many herbivores live in herds, which improves their chances of detecting a predator before it gets close. Prey animals typically have eyes on the sides of their heads, giving them a wide field of view to spot threats from nearly any direction. When a predator is detected, herd animals may flee together, making it difficult for a predator to focus on a single individual in a stampeding mass.

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