I've just made myself curious.
I was writing about the importance of doing bottle feeding correctly, especially with very young lambs, so that the milk arrives in the abomasum and not in the rumen or reticulum. I was explaining about the oesophageal groove forming a tube that delivers the milk into the correct stomach, once the reflex is established.
It made me wonder how we ever manage to get the stomach tube into the right stomach? And how we would know? I am happy about making sure it is in "the stomach" as opposed to the lungs - but what makes it land in the abomasum rather than the reticulum or omasum?
(I found the diagrams on
this page rather helpful. It's about calves but the same applies to other ruminants.)