matriphagy

English

Etymology

From matri- (“mother”) +‎ -phagy (“to feed on”).

Noun

matriphagy (uncountable)

  1. The condition where organisms feed on their own mother.
    • 2025 August 3, Paul Glynn, “Attenborough gives 'family feels' in new show Parenthood”, in BBC News‎[1]:
      As we discover in Parenthood, the mother spider gives her life for her spiderlings, who, when the time is right, slowly but surely creep up on her and their other elderly relatives en masse and eat them alive... making room for the new generation.
      Known as matriphagy, for director Jeff Wilson this moment provided the scene for "the perfect natural history sequence", as well as "the best narration I've ever heard him [Sir David] do."

Translations

Translations

References

  • Schneider, J. M. & Y. Lubin (1996) Infanticidal male eresid spiders. Nature. 381:655-656.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.