necrophagyn.
/nᵻˈkrɒfədʒi/, /nɛˈkrɒfədʒi/, U.S. /nəˈkrɑfədʒi/, /nɛˈkrɑfədʒi/ Zoology and Ecology.
The condition of being necrophagous; the eating of dead bodies or decaying animal tissue.
ΚΠ
1955 Ecol. Monogr. 25 395/1 Necrophagy of larvae upon larvae has never been observed in my experiments... But let an adult drown in the medium, and soon it will be reduced by the larvae to barely recognizable skeletal remains.
1989 Jrnl. Kansas Entomol. Soc. 62 534 Necrophagy in grasshoppers began as early as the third instar.
1996 Jrnl. Adv. Zool. 19 33 Biochemical adaptation to necrophagy, in this bee, occurs more in the qualitative than in quantitative level.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, September 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1955