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.

A large percentage of herbivores have mutualistic gut flora that help them digest plant matter, which is more difficult to digest than animal prey. This gut flora is made up of cellulose-digesting protozoans or bacteria living in the herbivores' intestines.

Herbivore is the anglicized form of a modern Latin coinage, "herbivora," cited in Charles Lyell's 1830 "Principles of Geology." Richard Owen employed the anglicized term in an 1854 work on fossil teeth and skeletons. "Herbivora" is derived from the Latin "herba" meaning a small plant or herb, and "vora," from "vorare," to eat or devour.

Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in general are known as primary consumers. "Herbivory" usually refers to animals eating plants; fungi, bacteria and protists that feed on living plants are usually termed plant pathogens (plant diseases), and microbes that feed on dead plants are saprotrophs. Flowering plants that obtain nutrition from other living plants are usually termed parasitic plants. There is, however, no single exclusive and definitive ecological classification of consumption patterns; each textbook has its own variations on the theme.

Answer the following questions:
1. Is Herbivory a form of consumption?
2. What's an example of an autotroph?
3. Is it harder to digest plant matter than it is to digest animal prey?
4. What does a large number of herbivores have in their stomach?
5. What type of bacteria is that comprised of?
6. Where does it live, exactly?
7. Are herbivores primary consumers?
8. What's a saprotroph?
9. What type of plant obtains nutrition from other living plants?
10. Is there a single classification?
11. What type of teeth do herbivores tend to have?
12. What's an example of something they're adapted to grind?
13. What else?
14. Can they eat touch plant material as well?
15. Is that a main component of a herbivore's diet?
16. What language did the term Herbivore originally come from?
17. Who cited it in a publication?
18. What year was that?
19. Who else employed the term, in 1854?
20. What is the English definition of "vorare"?

Numbered answers:
1. Yes
2. plants,
3. yes
4. mutualistic gut flora
5. cellulose-digesting protozoans
6. in the herbivores' intestines
7. yes
8. microbes that feed on dead plants
9. parasitic plants
10. no
11. wide flat teeth
12. grass
13. tree bark
14. yes
15. yes
16. Latin
17. Charles Lyell
18. 1830
19. Richard Owen
20. "vorare," to eat or devour