Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Helpless, naked, and blind when hatched: altricial birds.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Being one of or belonging to the Altrices; having the nature of Altrices; hoterophagous.
Wiktionary
- adj. Helpless at birth (of young animals); or having young which are helpless at birth.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. born naked and blind and dependent on parents for food; -- of hatchlings. Opposite of
precocial .
WordNet 3.0
- adj. (of hatchlings) naked and blind and dependent on parents for food
Etymologies
- From Latin altrīx, altrīc-, feminine of altor, nourisher, from alere, to nourish; see al-2 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“After all, we are big-brained altricial mammals, born helpless and requiring extensive adult care, who learn a variety of skills through different sorts of play.”
The Huffington Post: Marc Bekoff: The Child's Right to Play: Let Children Be Animals
“Like its opposite, the altricial strategy employed by creatures such as humans and songbirds, who are born naked and helpless, the precocial strategy was sculpted by eons of adaptation to food and predators.”
“IMO, passerine parasitism is mainly due to their altricial nature.”
“Consequently, gauging the amount of external care she can receive from her kin and society is at large is very consequent to her parenting decisions, as altricial helpless infants of Homo sapiens are significantly taxing to raise.”
“It may well be — but this is still somewhat controversial — that imprinting also plays an important part in the social - ization of altricial species (that is, those that are rather immature when born, e.g., dogs or monkeys).”
“With the altricial birds the young are hatched in an absolutely helpless condition, being both blind and naked, and it is necessary that they be fed by the parents, not only while occupying the nest, but also for several weeks afterward.”
“The young of altricial birds, like orioles, and bluebirds, and thrushes, being born naked and helpless, have a reason for loving their nest-homes, so carefully and delicately built to shelter their nude infancy.”
“Chicks need food provided by their parents, and rely on them for protection (altricial).”
“The chick that emerges from the egg falls into one of the two categories: altricial or precocial.”
“These once viciously carnivorous wolves have physically and behaviorally morphed into altricial beings that compel us to throw them birthday parties, brush their teeth, buy them clothes, and spend more money on their haircut than we might spend on our own.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘altricial’.
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Mirrored Vowels
Rules:
• The word must have an even number of vowels.
• There must be four or more vowels; thus, at minimum, an A-A-A-A or A-B-B-A pattern.
• The vowels must appear in a mir...feminine, solicitor, caruncular, repackager, semiprimes, fetishises, decomposer, demonlover, recomposer, sepultures, lipotropic, colesterol and 385 more...
ruzuzu See comments (including a cute picture of a kitty) over on alatricial. Oct 25, 2011
knitandpurl "They are quite the opposite, their altricial nature demanding that they be nursed and nurtured for a time, or else they should die in the crib and the experiment come to naught."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 370 Sep 4, 2011
reesetee Used to describe birds that are helpless at birth or hatching and require parental care for a time (as opposed to precocial birds). Oct 12, 2007