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Horse Primates Compare And Contrast

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When we see an animal, do we ever think about what is going on deeper than the eye can see? Do you ever think about all the things firing inside to keep things in balance and the animal functioning? Horses and primates have many similarities as well as differences.
Starting with the skeletal system, the skulls on a primate and a horse are quite different. A primate’s skull usually lacks the large sagittal crest (Cavendish, 2010, pg.10). Just like a horse, they also have very powerful jaws for chewing their food. They have very pronounced brow bones, and a large forehead. However, in horses and in primates the head is very proportioned with the whole body. Horses’ foreheads are typically flat and broad, while a primate’s skull is quite smaller and more rounded. Primates have a very flexible and short neck, while …show more content…

They consume foods such as fruits, leaves, bark, stems, insects, and even other primates. Nothing is off limits (Cavendish, 2010, pg.19). Horses on the other hand are herbivores, so they only eat plant based foods. Horses have hindgut fermenters, which mean that they only have one stomach, but it contains four different compartments to digest food. This contains the reticulum, rumen, omasum, and the abomasum which is the true stomach. They also have a flap that hangs over the distal end of the esophagus which prevents them from vomiting. Primates on the other hand, can vomit. Since horses have hindgut fermenters, digestion is broken down into multiple segments. Those segments include the cecum, ventral colon, and the dorsal colon (Miyaji, 2014). Primates digest their food a little differently. There aren’t many compartments the food has to travel through. Food travels down the esophagus into the stomach, where it is met by stomach acid and food is broken down and passed through the small and large intestine, nutrients are absorbed, and the waste is

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