a. and sb. [ad. L. fodient-em, pr. pple. of fodĕre to dig.]
A. adj. Digging; (of certain animals) burrowing.
1676. Coles, Fodient, digging.
1721. in Bailey.
1881. Nature, XXIV. 7 July, 209/2. Such are its fodient powers, says Mr. White, ‘that a man has scarcely time to dismount from his horse before the creature has buried itself to the depth of its own body.’
B. sb. A burrowing animal.
1879. E. W. White, in Proc. Zool. Soc. (1880), 9. Sluggish in all its movements, except as a fodient, in which capacity it perhaps excels all other burrowing animals, the Chlamydophorus performs the operation of excavation with such celerity, that a man has scarcely time to dismount from his horse before the creature has buried itself to the depth of its own body.
1888. Riverside Nat. Hist., V. 61. As a family the Fodients are entitled Orycteropodidæ.
