Describing organisms or behavior involving an animal consuming its own feces or waste materials, often for nutritional or medicinal reasons.
From auto- (self) + coprophagous (from Greek kopros, feces + phagein, to eat). A scientific term from biology describing seemingly disgusting but actually adaptive behaviors.
Rabbits are autocoprophagous and eat their own soft feces—it sounds gross, but they're actually retrieving nutrients that bacteria in their gut produced, essentially getting a second chance to absorb vitamins, which is why they're so efficient at extracting nutrition from plants.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.