Final answer:
Ruminant animals like cows, sheep, and goats primarily eat fibrous plant materials or roughage, such as grasses, hay, and silage. Their multi-chambered stomachs, harboring microorganisms, facilitate the digestion of cellulose. Pseudo-ruminants have similar diets but different digestive anatomies.
Step-by-step explanation:
Ruminant animals, which include species like cows, sheep, and goats, have specialized digestive systems consisting of multiple stomach compartments that enable them to digest cellulose-rich plant material known as roughage. Their diets consist mainly of fibrous plants such as grasses, hay, and silage. Ruminants have a unique alimentary process where the food is initially chewed, swallowed into the rumen, and then the reticulum where cellulose is broken down by microorganisms. This partially digested material, known as cud, is regurgitated, re-chewed, and passed on to the omasum and abomasum for further digestion.
Pseudo-ruminants, like camels and alpacas, despite having a different stomach anatomy with an enlarged cecum for fermentation, also consume large quantities of plant-based roughage. The digestion of roughage in both ruminants and pseudo-ruminants is critical for their nutrition and is facilitated by a symbiotic relationship with gut microflora that can break down cellulose, a task their own digestive enzymes cannot perform.