COW AND GRASS

The co-evolutionary relationship between cows and grass is one of nature’s underappreciated wonders; it also happens to be the key to understanding just about everything about modern meat. For the grasses, which have evolved to withstand the grazing of ruminants, the cow maintains and expands their habitat by preventing trees and shrubs from gaining a foothold and hogging the sunlight; the animal also spreads grass seed, plants it with his hooves, and then fertilizes it with his manure. In exchange for these services the grasses offer ruminants a plentiful and exclusive supply of lunch. For cows (like sheep, bison, and other ruminants) have evolved the special ability to convert grass— which single-stomached creatures like us can’t digest—into high-quality protein. They can do this because they possess what is surely the most highly evolved digestive organ in nature: the rumen. About the size of a medicine ball, the organ is essentially a forty-five-gallon fermentation tank in which a resident population of bacteria dines on grass. Living their unseen lives at the far end of the food chain that culminates in a hamburger, these bacteria have,justlike the grasses, coevolved with the cow, whom they feed. Truly this is an excellent system for all concerned: for the grasses, for the bacteria, for the animals, and for us, the animals’ eaters.

There is a co-evolutionary relationship between cows and grass as the cows, which is one of the ruminants that has rumen to digest the grass into high quality protein even though the grasses already evolved to against the grazing of ruminants, can help the grass spread seed by their hooves and also provide manure to it.