of ruminant land animals being it's the same scientific definition of the classification of ruminant land animals found in modern dictionaries?
Anonymous
Scientists classify even toed ungulates such as pigs, camels, deer, hippos, cows, buffalo, giraffe, antelope, goat and sheep as artiodactyls, in the mammalian order Artiodactyla.
The artiodactyls have an even number of toes, and they have a unique ankle joint. Only some artiodacyls are ruminants., For example, hippos and pigs are not ruminants although hippos do have a complex stomach. Camels are not ruminants either. Ruminants in fact are only a subset of the Artiodacyla. The ancestors of whales was a primitive artiodactyl, and it has the same unique ankle joint found only in artiodacyls, This ankle joint give artiodacyls the ability to change direction abruptly when they are running,. Horses, which are not artiodacyls, and which have an odd-number of toes, cannot do the same. Watch a rodeo and see how a bull can spin from side to side quickly to try to get rid of the rider on its back and you will see the artiodactyl ankle joint at work. A bucking bronco cannot do the same. It does not spin from side to side as abruptly, Its turns are a lot less severe and it relies move on moving up and down to dislodge a rider.
The people who wrote religious texts of course do not have as much knowledge as modern scientists about evolutionary relationships. They think that ruminants such as sheep are okay to eat, and that pigs are not okay to eat, even though pigs and sheep are both artiodactyls. In fact sheep and pigs are closer relatives to one another than they are to camels.