Arthropod mouthparts in the context of "Chewing"

A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically evolved to feed on plants, especially upon vascular tissues such as foliage, fruits or seeds, as the main component of its diet. These more broadly also encompass animals that eat non-vascular autotrophs such as mosses, algae and lichens, but do not include those feeding on decomposed plant matters (i.e. detritivores) or macrofungi (i.e. fungivores).

As a result of their plant-based diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouth structures (jaws or mouthparts) well adapted to mechanically break down plant materials, and their digestive systems have special enzymes (e.g. amylase and cellulase) to digest polysaccharides. Grazing herbivores such as horses and cattles have wide flat-crowned teeth that are better adapted for grinding grass, tree bark and other tougher lignin-containing materials, and many of them evolved rumination or cecotropic behaviors to better extract nutrients from plants. A large percentage of herbivores also have mutualistic gut flora made up of bacteria and protozoans that help to degrade the cellulose in plants, whose heavily cross-linking polymer structure makes it far more difficult to digest than the protein- and fat-rich animal tissues that carnivores eat.

Cephalization is an evolutionary trend in bilaterian animals that, over a sufficient number of generations, concentrates the special sense organs and nerve ganglia towards the front of the body where the mouth is located, often producing an enlarged head. This is associated with the animal's movement direction and bilateral symmetry. Cephalization of the nervous system has led to the formation of a brain with varying degrees of functional centralization in three phyla of bilaterian animals, namely the arthropods, cephalopod molluscs, and vertebrates. Hox genes organise aspects of cephalization in the bilaterians.

A proboscis (/proʊˈbɒsɪs, -kɪs/) is an elongated appendage from the head of an animal, either a vertebrate or an invertebrate. In invertebrates, the term usually refers to tubular mouthparts used for feeding and sucking. In vertebrates, a proboscis is an elongated nose or snout.

Insects have mouthparts that may vary greatly across insect species, as they are adapted to particular modes of feeding. The earliest insects had chewing mouthparts. Most specialisation of mouthparts are for piercing and sucking, and this mode of feeding has evolved a number of times independently. For example, mosquitoes (which are true flies) and aphids (which are true bugs) both pierce and suck, though female mosquitoes feed on animal blood whereas aphids feed on plant fluids.

The Entognatha, from Ancient Greek ἐντός (entós), meaning "inside", and γνάθος (gnáthos), meaning "jaw", are a class of wingless and ametabolous arthropods, which, together with the insects, makes up the subphylum Hexapoda. Their mouthparts are entognathous, meaning that they are retracted within the head, unlike the insects. Entognatha are apterous, meaning that they lack wings. The class contains three orders: Collembola (springtails, 9000 species), Diplura ("two-tail", 1000 species) and Protura ("first-tail", 800 species). These three groups were historically united with the now-obsolete order Thysanura to form the subclass Apterygota, but it has since been recognized that these orders might not be closely related, and Entognatha and Apterygota are now both considered to be paraphyletic groups.

Springtails (class Collembola) form the largest of the three lineages of modern hexapods that are no longer considered insects, i.e. Protura, Diplura and Collembola. Although the three lineages are sometimes grouped together in a class called Entognatha because they have internal mouthparts, they do not appear to be any more closely related to one another than they are to insects, which have external mouthparts. There are more than 9000 species.

Springtails are omnivorous, free-living organisms that prefer moist conditions. They do not directly engage in the decomposition of organic matter, but contribute to it indirectly through the fragmentation of organic matter and the control of soil microbial communities. The word Collembola is from the Ancient Greek κόλλα kólla meaning 'glue' and ἔμβολος émbolos meaning 'peg'; this name was given due to the existence of the collophore, which was previously thought to stick to surfaces to stabilize the creature.