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Welcome, class, to the grasslands of Africa, where we’ve come to see how various animals start the whole process of digestion.

Lions, like all cats, eat meat.

But a lion’s jaws only move up and down, not side to side, which means they don’t chew like humans.

They use their sharp teeth to cut food into chunks before swallowing it.

Vultures swallow food in chunks too, but like all birds, they don’t have teeth.

They use the talons of their feet to grip food - careful… and their beaks to rip it.

Vultures, like other birds, have crops attached to their throats.

Crops are pouches for storing food, which allow birds to swallow more than they need and save some for later.

This comes in very handy when there isn’t much food around, or if the place you find food isn’t safe to hang around and digest in.

Woah!

This interesting creature is an egg-eating snake, which only eats – you guessed it – eggs!

This might seem like an impossible task, but like all snakes, the egg eater has super expandable jaws that allow it to swallow stuff bigger than its own head.

Once inside the mouth, the snake uses its muscles to push the egg against sharp spines that pierce the shell.

All the eggy goodness goes down to the snake’s stomach and the shell comes back up.

What peculiar eating habits these animals have!

Not like us flies, of course, who vomit over our food first and then suck up the liquid.

Oh look, the vultures missed a bit…