In this context: rabbits are not designed to eat grass but they have adapted … so they eat their poo.. they are in effect processing the food… (which I suppose cows also do but have changed design internally)….
Its perhaps imperfect as a definition (where do you draw a line) but to me there is a distinct difference in an ability to manage to eat your own poo and extract some nutrition and developing 4 stomachs.
Rabbits can survive eating grass only… it’s just not healthy…
In the same way I think there are a whole load of foods we are “designed” to eat… from 300,000 years of adaptation and even before… then going into redesign…
Excuse me? Are you actually suggesting that rabbits are carnivores that chose to eat an unsuitable diet out of contrariness, like giant pandas?
They’re herbivores, they eat plants, which contains cellulose, which for any mammal is hard to digest, so their digestive system has developed a system to process it, like every other herbivore, and not because they ought to be hunting down and killing voles or other rabbits!
Rabbits are herbivores that feed by grazing on grass, forbs, and leafy weeds. In consequence, their diet contains large amounts of cellulose, which is hard to digest. Rabbits solve this problem via a form of hindgut fermentation. They pass two distinct types of feces: hard droppings and soft black viscous pellets, the latter of which are known as caecotrophs and are immediately eaten (a behaviour known as coprophagy). Rabbits reingest their own droppings (rather than chewing the cud as do cows and numerous other herbivores) to digest their food further and extract sufficient nutrients.[20]
