noun
definition
A small, herbivorous mammal in the order Hyracoidea, the rock hyrax.
example
The dassie is the closest living relative to the elephant.
Examples of dassie in a Sentence
Of animals still found may be mentioned baboons and monkeys, the leopard, red lynx (Felis caracal), spotted hyena, aard wolf, wild cat, long-eared fox, jackals of various kinds, the dassie or rock rabbit, the scaly anteater, the ant bear (aardvaark), the mongoose and the spring haas, a rodent of the jerboa family.
Of ungulata, besides a few hundreds of rare varieties, there are the springbuck, of which great herds still wander on the open veld, the steinbok, a small and beautiful animal which is sometimes coursed like a hare, the klipspringer or " chamois of South Africa," common in the mountains, the wart-hog and the dassie or rock rabbit.
At the Cape they are known to the Dutch as Bass (badger), which has been anglicized into "dassie."