Digestion and absorption of carbohydrates

Few animals are equipped with enzymes capable of attacking cellulose, although this polysaccharide plays a very large part in the nutrition of herbivorous animals. In these creatures the task of digesting cellulose is usually delegated to vast hordes of symbiotic microorganisms, and the useful products of their activity consist in the main of short-chain fatty acids. The mechanisms of this degradation are complex, if only because many different kinds of microorganisms are involved.