NOUN
- eating earth, clay, chalk; occurs in some primitive tribes, sometimes in cases of nutritional deficiency or obsessive behavior
How To Use geophagy In A Sentence
- For many years, parrots and macaws had been observed on the river banks in the Amazonian forests of Peru biting off and swallowing chunks of orange clay - a practice known as geophagy.
- Mineral supplementation is usually postulated as the purpose of this behavior, and most geophagy by G. agassizii is on calcium-rich substrates by adult females.
- The following quotation serves both to illustrate his main point, that geophagy has been widespread, and to exhibit the pleasant style in which he wrote.
- It may explain, for example, occurrence of geophagy in parrots, which consume large quantities of secondary metabolites in fruits and seeds.
- Howler monkeys are well known to engage in geophagy, or earth eating, though the reason they do it remains unclear.
