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Show Parrot Fish Chews Cud. Native to the Eastern Mediterranean is the parrot fish that chews its cud like a cow. In other words, It cuts off Its food in relatively large bits, stores it away until it has time for the business of thoroughly chewing, and then reduces it to a fine pulp. Curiously Cu-riously enough, the ancients called this fish a ruminant, but their tales of It had been taken with many grains of salt, until recently, by modern naturalists. nat-uralists. A writer in the Scientific American Monthly notes that as far back as the Fourth century B. C, Aristotle asserted that the parrot fish is to be classed among ruminant animals. ani-mals. This story was repeated by the Roman writer on natural history, Pliny. It passed as a fable, like 80 many oilier ancient statements of fact since verified. |