granivorous

[gruh-niv-er-uhs]

adjective

1. (of an animal, especially a bird) eating grain and seeds.

granivorous

/ ˈɡrænɪˌvɔː, ɡræˈnɪvərəs /

adjective

1. (of animals) feeding on seeds and grain

Other Word Forms

• granivore noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of granivorous¹

First recorded in 1640–50; grani- ( def. ) + -vorous ( def. )

Example Sentences

These carnivorous Animals, who naturally reject all vegetable Food, are the only primary Harbingers or Breeders of it; though they are capable of transmitting it by a Bite to graminivorous and granivorous ones.

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Seed′-drill, a machine for sowing seed in rows; Seed′-eat′er, a granivorous bird.—adj.

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In fact, there are few of the granivorous animals that may not be brought to be carnivorous.

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Granivorous birds, frequenting open spaces, and singing during their flight; nesting on ground and seeking their food there by running; they are 'pulverators', i.e. they shake dust or sand into their feathers instead of bathing.

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Physiology is indebted to him for the ingenious and decisive experiments which, in 1752, made known the difference that exists, with respect to digestion, between birds of prey, whose stomach acts on their food only by means of a solvent fluid, and granivorous birds, in which a very powerful muscular gizzard exercises a pressure sufficient to break down the hardest bodies and reduce them to powder.

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