Grass appears all over the planet, and there are herbivores all over the planet that eat grass.
The grass is one of the most common elements of herbivore diets.
You can find animals that eat grass as commonly as you can find grass.
25 Animals That Eat Grass
1. Rabbit
Rabbits love to eat grass and steal some fresh lawn clippings from people’s lawns.
People who own rabbits know how much their rabbits enjoy a supervised visit to the backyard.
There are some things to consider before taking your pet rabbit out to eat grass, though.
If you are taking your rabbit outside to enjoy the fresh air and grass, you will need to ensure that the lawn has not been treated with pesticides or any type of bug killer.
These chemicals are toxic to rabbits and could make them incredibly sick or even die.
A natural lawn will serve as a treat for your rabbit.
Not all domesticated rabbits like to eat grass, but wild rabbits will chew through your entire lawn.
Domesticated rabbits that do like to eat grass should be introduced to small amounts of it slowly.
2. Horse
Part of what keeps horses healthy is all of the pasture grass they eat in a day.
The grass they eat has silica, which is good for their dental health.
A horse will eat about 25 pounds of grass in a single day.
While a horse’s mouth may be great for chewing up food, it isn’t used for breathing.
Horses only breathe out of their noses.
A horse’s mouth is too full of saliva, producing about 10 gallons of saliva each day.
Male horses have more teeth than female horses.
Males have 40 teeth, and females have 36 teeth.
3. Cow
Most people have seen fields of cows munching peacefully on the grass on long drives through the country.
You may not know just how much grass cows eat.
In order for someone to be allowed to own a cow, they must have at least one acre of land.
Each cow needs an entire acre of land in order to eat the 25 to 30 pounds of grass that they need to eat every day.
That is about 3% of their body weight.
Cows will chew 40 to 50 times per minute and will chew for at least eight hours each day.
There are more than 8,000 different breeds of cows.
Different breeds of cows are bred for different resources, such as beef, leather, and milk.
About 98 million cows live in the United States today.
4. Giraffe
Giraffes are tall, magnificent animals that typically love to munch on leaves and other tall foliage.
However, when food close to their faces is hard to find, they will eat grass to make up for the lack of food.
Giraffes eat for 75% of their day.
Their large bodies take a lot of food to have enough energy to walk and run.
They can run 35 miles per hour over short distances and 10 miles per hour over long distances.
In order to reach the ground, giraffes must spread their legs and bow down.
This is how they eat grass and drink water.
Luckily, giraffes only need to drink a few times per day because they get plenty of water from the plants they’re eating.
5. Wildebeest
Wildebeests rely on grass as their main source of nutrients.
They will roam with their herd of thousands to find enough grass for the whole herd to eat.
Wildebeests spend a third of their life grazing and half of their life sleeping.
At top speed, a wildebeest can run 50 miles per hour, especially when predators like lions, hyenas, and leopards are chasing them.
They aren’t typically taller than 4.5 feet, but they can weigh up to 600 pounds.
The easiest way to tell a male wildebeest from a female wildebeest is the size of their horns.
Males will typically have horns that are over 30 inches while females will have horns that are 12 to 16 inches.
The base of their horns grows rougher as they get older.
6. Antelope
Antelopes are normally herbivores who graze on grass everywhere they go.
While one species of antelope is an omnivore, they all eat grass.
The grass is an easy meal to find in their African grassland homes.
Herds are made up of about 15 to 20 antelopes.
There is only one adult male antelope in each herd.
While female calves are allowed to remain in the herd, male calves are exiled from the group after the age of three.
When herds get too big, they break off into families, having the next oldest male antelope become the next leader.
They keep herd sizes small to ensure that they can find enough food while roaming the grasslands.
Feeding time can be dangerous for antelopes because this is most commonly when predators like lions will attack.
Antelope use their sharp horns to defend the calves and female antelopes.
7. Capybara
Capybaras are giant, adorable rodents that spend their days grazing on grass.
While capybaras love to eat grass, they also need to eat their own poop.
The bacteria found in many rodents’ poop is actually extremely beneficial to their digestive system, giving rodents similar benefits to what humans get from eating yogurt.
Grass makes up about 75% of their diet, along with a couple of other plants.
Capybaras will eat six to eight pounds of grass per day.
They can weigh from 60 to more than 170 pounds and stand at about 1.6 feet tall.
Capybaras can be found in Central America and South America, east of the Andes Mountain.
Capybaras love to swim in the rivers and often fall asleep in the riverbanks with only their noses showing.
8. Giant Panda
Bamboo is a type of grass, and no creature on the planet loves bamboo more than the giant panda.
Giant pandas eat between 20 and 40 pounds of bamboo per day.
These majestic creatures will spend half of their day eating bamboo, and some pandas can eat upwards of 80 pounds of bamboo in captivity.
Giant pandas stand more than five feet tall and can weigh over 100 pounds.
The main priority of the giant panda is eating.
The reason that giant pandas are so endangered is that they simply don’t care to reproduce.
They would rather eat.
Because of all the food they eat, pandas end up pooping upwards of 60 pounds per day.
All of the bamboos they eat are filled with fiber.
While pandas have the teeth necessary to meat, pandas prefer to stick to berries and bamboo.
9. Hippopotamus
Hippopotamuses are massive African animals that love to eat short grass.
They spend five to six hours per day eating nothing but grass.
In order to find grass to eat, hippos will travel for five miles or more.
In total, a hippo will end up eating 150 pounds of food per day.
Hippos are extremely territorial, but only in the water.
The water is an important place for hippos.
It keeps their sensitive skin moisturized and is where hippos mate and later give birth.
Hippos will charge other animals or humans who try to enter their waters.
10. Red Kangaroo
Red kangaroos are crepuscular herbivores that love to eat grass.
Red kangaroos are the largest species of kangaroo.
They stand at almost five to six feet tall and weigh from about 40 to nearly 200 pounds.
These kangaroos were one of the first symbols of Australia and can live for 16 to 32 years.
Although these kangaroos are the symbol of Australia, they can cause Australians all sorts of trouble.
Kangaroos are prone to causing car accidents and creating similar problems that raccoons do.
In an attempt to lower the kangaroo population, the Australian government has asked locals and tourists to eat more kangaroo meat.
Kangaroo farms release fewer emissions than cow farms but produce similar meat.
You can eat kangaroo steaks, sausages, or even put this meat on your pizza.
11. Goat
Goats eat so much grass that some people have replaced their lawnmowers with herds of goats.
Goats will need to eat two to four pounds of grass each day.
To process all the grass they eat, goats have four-compartment stomachs.
One part of a goat’s stomach is called its rumen.
The rumen regurgitates food that needs more chewing from the goat.
This causes goats to burp often.
The properly chewed grass then enters the reticulum.
The grass passes through the third stomach, the omasum, and then to the final stomach, which is called the abomasum.
12. Elephant
Elephants eat grass in order to energize their massive bodies.
They need 250 to 300 pounds of food per day.
Elephants can eat up to 600 pounds of food each day.
Elephants will also need 25 to 50 gallons of water every day.
Elephants are incredibly bright animals that have the largest brains of any other land mammal.
Their brains can weigh anywhere from eight to 12 pounds.
An elephant’s heart can weigh up to 50 pounds.
Elephants also have the largest eyelashes in the world, averaging at about five inches per eyelash.
Every single part of the elephant is massive, including its appetite.
13. Camel
Food can be hard to come by in the desert.
Camels will eat just about anything, but they prefer to eat grass.
Camels eat about nine pounds of grass per day.
Unlike goats, camels only have three stomachs, but both animals do regurgitate their food to chew on later.
Camels know there is not much water in the desert, so when a camel does find water, it can drink up to 40 gallons in one trip to the watering hole.
A camel’s humps can store 80 pounds of fat, which is stored for when food is low.
There are only two types of camels: the single-humped dromedary camel and the two-humped Bactrian camel.
14. Squirrel
Squirrels will eat grass when they can’t find anything else to eat, but what squirrels most love to eat is grass seeds.
Squirrels aren’t picky eaters and will eat just about anything they can get their hands on.
They’ve been observed eating vegetables, cereal, cheese, nuts, birdseed, fungi, eggs, and even cat or dog food that has been left outside.
Squirrels will eat 1.5 pounds of food each week, which is the average body weight of a squirrel.
These tiny, high-energy critters need all the food they can get.
Unlike many mammals, squirrels don’t hibernate as long.
That’s why you’ll often see them storing nuts in their homes well before winter begins.
15. Moose
Moose are majestic grass lovers who will eat 50 to 60 pounds of food per day.
While the majority of their diet is the grass they graze on, moose also like to eat the leaves and berries off of bushes.
Their stomachs can hold up to 112 pounds.
Moose are the largest members of the deer family, weighing as much as 1,400 pounds.
Despite their massive size, moose can run up to 35 miles per hour.
They can also swim six miles per hour, which is faster than Olympic swimmers!
16. Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros rely on the grass in order to sustain their large size.
It takes 120 pounds of grass to satisfy the needs of a rhinoceros.
Female rhinoceros and their young travel in groups called “crashes”, while male rhinos will live by themselves, only finding females when it is time for them to mate.
Young rhinos are tasty targets for lions, which is why mothers and their children travel together.
Rhinos will trample attacking lions and use their iconic horns to pierce them.
17. Emu
Emus are omnivores that will eat plenty of grass paired with grubs and other insects that the bird eats.
Before nesting season, the male emus will eat even more food in order to bulk up for nesting season.
Female emus may be the ones to lay the eggs, but they take no part in raising the egg or the chick that hatches from it.
The males are the ones that build the nest, warm the egg, and then raise the chick.
Oftentimes, the fathers will chase the mothers off if they try to interfere.
18. Manatee
Manatees are massive, sea-dwelling mammals that love to eat sea grass.
A manatee will eat 100 pounds of sea grass each day.
Manatees eat for six to eight hours every day and are constantly chewing.
These massive sea creatures are such noisy eaters that the grinding of their teeth can be heard underwater.
In order to get all the food they need in a day, manatees may also eat crayfish, crabs, leeches, and starfish.
Although often thought to be herbivores, manatees are actually omnivores.
19. Llama
Llamas, even in captivity, will mostly need to eat grass.
Llamas help fertilize the pastures they eat, but they can’t handle harder foliage, such as weeds.
An acre of land is enough for three to five llamas to graze in.
Llamas are a lot smarter than they look.
Because of their socialness and intelligence, they make great guardians for herds of goats or sheep.
Llamas are smart enough to tell which animals are friends and which are predators.
Their sociability will often lead them to “adopt” other groups of animals.
20. Guinea Pig
Guinea pigs make for adorable and easy pets, making them a popular choice for people’s first pets.
Guinea pig owners know how much their pets love to spend time outside, eating the flowers and weeds.
Guinea pigs can eat a handful of grass per day safely, as long as that grass has not been treated for weeds or bugs.
Guinea pig owners should be cautious when taking their pets outside while the grass is wet.
Guinea pigs that spend too much time in wet grass can get ringworm.
Wet grass is also prone to growing mold, which is dangerous for them.
21. Quokka
The quokka has become famous thanks to their smiley faces and their interest in humans.
These friendly rodents are from Rottnest Island, near Australia.
They mostly eat grass, but also like to eat berries and other plants.
Sadly, quokkas are endangered.
They have lost their homes to logging and human development on their island.
They have no predators on the island, except for humans.
Although quokkas are extremely social, it is best not to pet or feed them.
22. Green Sea Turtle
Green sea turtles eat more and more grass as they get older.
Although they start life by eating an array of bugs and crustaceans, sea turtles become herbivores by the time they are fully grown.
As green sea turtles get older, they become less agile, making it harder to catch fast prey.
Green sea turtles can grow to be over three feet around and well over 300 pounds.
Only one in every 10,000 sea turtles that hatch will ever grow into adulthood.
23. Beaver
Beavers may be known for eating wood, but a beaver’s diet consists of more than just hard plants.
These industrious animals like to have a balance of soft and hard foliage in their diets.
The beaver’s favorite type of soft plant life to eat is grass.
Beavers are able to break through wood thanks to all the extra iron in their teeth, which is what makes their teeth look orange.
Beavers also sharpen their teeth while eating wood which, over the years, will reveal the white coating of beaver’s teeth.
24. Sloth
Sloths like to eat grass, along with other plants.
Although sloths only lower themselves to the ground in order to use the bathroom, they like to grab a bite of grass to eat while going to the bathroom.
They also poop a third of their weight in one bathroom trip.
Sloths are three times as strong as humans, but they have 30% less muscle mass.
They have gained all of their muscles from their habit of hanging from branches while sleeping.
If it gets too cold for sloths, it can kill all the microbes in their stomachs that digest all of their food.
25. Duck
In the wild, ducks will eat grass, weeds, larvae, slugs, snakes, and even frogs.
This makes them omnivores.
Whether they are wild or domesticated, ducks love to eat green foliage, with grass being an easy favorite.
Occasionally, ducks will also eat stones, gravel, and sand.
They do this in order to store food in their gizzards and break it down.
In 1911, some gold prospectors found small nuggets of gold in the gizzards of ducks that they had shot.
Ducks aren’t picky when trying to find something to eat.
They will eat anything.
