noun
definition
Any digging animal (such as a mole)
adjective
definition
Of, pertaining to, or adapted for digging or burrowing.
Examples of fossorial in a Sentence
The prey is sometimes stung in the neighbourhood of the nerve ganglia, so that it is paralysed but not killed, the grub of the fossorial wasp devouring its victim alive; but this instinct varies in perfection, and in many cases the larva flourishes equally whether its prey be killed or not.
Among the Vespoid families of fossorial wasps, the Pornpilidae are the most important.
Indeed, despite the fact that they present much diversity of habit - some being arboreal, as the squirrels, many of which are provided with expansions of skin or parachutes on which they glide from tree to tree; some cursorial, as the hares; others jumpers, as the jerboas; others fossorial, as the mole-rats; and others aquatic, as the beavers and waterrats - no important structural modifications are correlated with such diversity of habit.
Upon hatching, the young, which differ from the adult in possessing long antennae and a pair of powerful fossorial anterior legs, fall to the ground, burrow below the surface, and spend a prolonged subterranean larval existence feeding upon the roots of vegetation.