raptorial
Americanadjective
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preying upon other animals; predatory.
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adapted for seizing prey, as the bill or claws of a bird.
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belonging or pertaining to the Raptores, a former order in which the falconiform and strigiform birds were erroneously grouped together.
adjective
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(of the feet of birds) adapted for seizing prey
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(esp of birds) feeding on prey; predatory
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of or relating to birds of prey
Etymology
Origin of raptorial
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The team also examined owl and raptorial predators however while the effects were the same, they were not as evident.
From Science Daily • Nov. 21, 2023
In either case, we clearly have underestimated the abilities of those big, beady, raptorial eyes.
From Scientific American • Oct. 13, 2018
Equipped with grasping, raptorial appendages, these Ordovician hunters plucked up soft-bodied prey and fed it into their camera-shutter mouths.
From Science Magazine • May 25, 2011
Scats from predatory mammals and reptiles and pellets from raptorial birds were examined.
From A Population Study of the Prairie Vole (Microtus ochrogaster) in Northeastern Kansas by Martin, Edwin P.
It would be but a short step from this figure to the ancient sun symbol with which the eagle and other raptorial birds are intimately associated.
From Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744 by Fewkes, Jesse Walter
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
