Now hear of Artiodactylos—the even-toed,
The hoofed ones who inherited the grass.
For in the Miocene the world bestowed
A gift that changed the mammals' looking-glass:
The grasses spread—Gramineos, the humble
And the revolutionary, the plant
That thrived on being eaten, whose tumble
Under tooth and hoof was not the recant
Of life but the stimulus to grow again—
For the grass grows from the base, not from the tip,
And the grazer who crops the blade has plain
And accidentally ensured the grip
Of grass upon the soil: the more it's eaten
The more it spreads, the more the roots
Bind the earth—a plant that's beaten
Down stands up again, whose shoots
Are stimulated by the jaw that clips them.
And with the grass came the grassland—vast
And open, treeless, where the wind whips them
Into waves like an ocean—and the fast
And fleet-footed herbivore was born
From the need to cross this open ground
Where every predator sees the shorn
And exposed prey animal, and the sound
Of approaching death carries for miles.
Artiodactylos answered with the hoof—
Two toes, even, balanced on the tiles
Of the hard ground—and the proof
Of the even-toed design was the run:
The artiodactyl ran on its toenails,
The ankle raised, the leg a spun
And elongated lever of the trail's
Demand for speed—and the ruminant stomach
Was the other gift: the four-chambered vat
Of fermentation that could stomach
The cellulose of grass, the flat
And silica-rich blade that wore the teeth
Of any ordinary mammal down—
But the artiodactyl's teeth beneath
The high-crowned enamel wore the crown
Of hypsodont design: tall teeth
That could outlast a lifetime
Of abrasive grass, the wreath
Of enamel deep enough to climb
Through decades of the grinding diet.
The cow chews her cud—the rumen's first pass
Breaks the grass to a quiet
And fermenting mash, the vast
Bacterial colony inside
The rumen doing what no mammal's enzyme
Can do alone: break cellulose and hide
It as volatile fatty acids, the paradigm
Of symbiosis between the cow and her
Internal world of microbes—a billion
Bacteria per milliliter
Of rumen fluid, a civilian
Army of digestive allies.
Cervidos—the deer—grew antlers,
The only organ in the mammal that flies
The flag of annual renewal: the chancers
Of the forest grow their headgear fresh
Each year, from velvet-covered bone
That branches and extends the mesh
Of tines and beams—the full-grown throne
Of the stag's display, shed and regrown
Each season—the fastest-growing tissue
In the animal kingdom, the shown
And spectacular issue
Of testosterone and calcium and the need
To impress the female eye.
And Bovidos—the cattle, the sheep, the breed
Of the permanent horn that does not die
And regrow but persists, the keratin sheath
Over the bone core, the weapon
That serves for life—the underneath
Of the bovid's headgear is the steppin'
Stone of the most successful
Ungulate family on the earth:
More species than any, the wrestle
Of the bovids with the grassland's girth
Produced the antelope, the gazelle, the gnu,
The buffalo, the mountain goat, the sheep—
Every grassland on every continent knew
The bovid's hoof, the bovid's deep
And ruminating presence.
Honor the grazers—
Artiodactylos and his children, who turned
The inedible grass into the praisers
Of the Miocene's open world, and earned
The right to fill the largest biome
On the planet—the grassland, the savanna,
The steppe, the prairie—every home
Of the open ground was the manna
Of the even-toed, the ruminant, the fleet
And hoofed inheritors of the Cenozoic plain.