Does the Rabbit/Hyrax Chew The Cud?

There has been much controversy over the scripture which states that the rabbit/hyrax chews it's cud. The reason for this is because modern science has classified the rabbit/hyrax as 'non-ruminant' rather than 'ruminant'. To understand this, one must first understand this:

"Ruminants are mammals that are able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, principally through bacterial actions. The process typically requires regurgitation of fermented ingesta (known as cud), and chewing it again."

The primary difference between a ruminant and non-ruminant is that ruminants have a four-compartment stomach.

However, both ruminants and non-ruminants are herbivores...

"A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthparts adapted to rasping or grinding. Horses and other herbivores have wide flat teeth that are adapted to grinding grass, tree bark, and other tough plant material...."

And

It is important to note that--

Herbivores, both ruminants and non-ruminants, are unique in that they are able to utilize roughages.

Therefore the erroneous differentiation due to their somewhat divergent anatomy does not change this fact.

And

It is important to note that—

A rabbit does have a specialized chamber in order to successfully digest roughage... just like those classified as ruminant:

"Rabbits excrete two types of droppings, ordinary fecal waste matter, which are dried out pellets (fecal pellets) and cecotropes, which are NOT fecal matter and form moist grape like bunches. Cecotropes are predigested hay/food pellets for the rabbit to eat and further digest. A rabbits digestive system has a two step process. A rabbit requires a substantial proportion of hay and/or grass in their diet. This type of roughage is difficult to digest in any animal gut, {and the rabbit's gut is highly specialized to process this in the cecum}. Here the fibre is partially digested and the rabbit excretes this partially processed fibre as a specialized pellet called a cecotrope. The rabbit then eats the cecotrope and the nutrients that were locked within (almost indigestible) hay or grass are absorbed by the rabbit's gut. This predigested matter is easier to process the second time around. Any waste produced by digesting the cecotrope is expelled as normal, inedible fecal matter, as is any waste product.

Rabbits are different in that they do not have a four-part stomach, and the material that reaches their fermentation chamber has already been chewed and partially digested. However, cows and rabbits are similar in that they both have a fermentation chamber with microorganisms that digest otherwise indigestible plant material and convert it to nutrients. Both cows and rabbits also have a mechanism to pass the contents of their fermentation chamber back to the mouth and then on through the digestive tract."

......

People confuse the biblical concept of 'chewing the cud' with modern biological taxonomy.

The verses do not say the rabbit/hyrax chews the cud "and its stomach has four compartments." They say the rabbit/hyrax chews the cud, and cud is the food that an animal brings back up from its stomach into its mouth to be chewed again.

The biblical concept of chewing the cud simply refers to an animal that is capable of digesting roughage/grass successfully in that its digestive system is specifically designed to accomplish this in that it is capable of redigesting predigested material (cud).

And the fact that those that wrote the bible had that kind of advanced insight is just more proof that the biblical scriptures are divinely inspired.

Rabbits, though considered non-ruminant in modern biology due to the fact that they do not have a stomach with four compartments, are very much capable of chewing the cud due to the fact that their digestive system is differentiated so as to sustain successful digestion of roughage in the same manner as those labeled ruminant.

Any animal that has a digestive system "well suited" to eat grass/foliage chews the cud.

Both the rabbit and hyrax chew the cud either through refection as I mentioned above or through merycism which can be viewed below in a video that shows the hyrax bringing up it’s cud:

http://youtu.be/RQVTBX-Q7IE