Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Tonic immobility (also known as the act of feigning death, or exhibiting thanatosis) is a behaviour in which some animals become apparently temporarily paralysed and unresponsive to external stimuli. Tonic immobility is most generally considered to be an anti-predator behavior because it occurs most often in response to an extreme threat such ...
An animal epithet is a name used to label a person or group, by association with some perceived quality of an animal. Epithets may be formulated as similes , explicitly comparing people with the named animal, as in "he is as sly as a fox", or as metaphors , directly naming people as animals, as in "he is a [sly] fox".
Distraction displays frequently take the form of injury-feigning. [4] However, animals may also imitate the behavior of a small rodent or alternative prey item for the predator; [13] [14] [15] imitate young [12] or nesting behaviors such as brooding (to cause confusion as to the true location of the nest), [13] mimic foraging behaviors away ...
A list of metaphors in the English language organised alphabetically by type. A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g.,
Hypocrisy is the practice of feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not. [1] The word "hypocrisy" entered the English language c. 1200 with the meaning "the sin of pretending to virtue or goodness". [2] Today, "hypocrisy" often refers to advocating behaviors that one does not practice.
This list of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names is intended to help those unfamiliar with classical languages to understand and remember the scientific names of organisms. The binomial nomenclature used for animals and plants is largely derived from Latin and Greek words, as are some of the names used for higher taxa , such ...
Many prey animals, and to defend against seed predation also seeds of plants, [55] make use of poisonous chemicals for self-defence. [51] [56] These may be concentrated in surface structures such as spines or glands, giving an attacker a taste of the chemicals before it actually bites or swallows the prey animal: many toxins are bitter-tasting ...
A later writer, Edward Topsell, provided a different explanation for the tears, saying, "There are not many brute beasts that can weep, but such is the nature of the crocodile that, to get a man within his danger, he will sob, sigh, and weep as though he were in extremity, but suddenly he destroyeth him."