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Comment by _yb2s | Hacker News Reader

I've had half a dozen dogs, and every single one of them ate grass every chance they could get- in large quantities. I also don't think it has anything to do with having an upset stomach. Dogs seem to really enjoy grass, and make it a regular part of their diet... I know they likely can't extract any calories from it, but it may have other benefits.

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There is nutrition in grass which is available to mammals like dogs (and humans). They are mostly cellulose, but plants use carbohydrates and proteins for their own structure and metabolism, and these are present in all plants in at least small amounts. Roots, shoots and fleshy stalks, are better than the leaves. Like an unpleasant, less nutritious lettuce or celery with too much fibre. Those are also hard to get meaningful calories from at like 50 - 100 calories per pound, but there's some calories, and there's other nutrients in them too.

My dog strongly disagrees with you that grass is more unpleasant than lettuce.

The cellulose aka fibre is useful for them too, for the same reason as us, even if there are not many calories or other nutrients available. Dry food, bones, high protein diets can all benefit from a bit of bulk.

I've been told that wild dogs and wolves eat the digestive contents of herbivores which is semi-digested (free range haggis!), which definitely seems true to me given how much both of mine go for rabbit/sheep droppings. This supposedly supplies some more available vegetative nutrients to them. But this came from a pet nutritionist, I'm not sure how strict or scientific their training is.

Pet dogs that live with cats are well-known to eat cat turds out of the litterbox.

The only thing dogs like more than cat feces is human feces. I assume that is deeply breeded-in. If you are a group of 50-100 nomadic hunter(-gatherer)s, you will appreciate not so much smelling surroundings.

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