oviparous
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
From Latin oviparus, ovo- “egg” + pariō (“give birth, produce, bring forth”).
Pronunciation[edit]
Adjective[edit]
oviparous (not comparable)
- Egg-laying; depositing eggs that develop and hatch outside the body as a reproductive strategy.
- The echidna is a monotreme, which is the extremely small subset of oviparous mammals.
- 1643, Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend[1]:
- And though it might be thought that all animals who have lungs do cough; yet in cataceous fishes, who have large and strong lungs, the same is not observed; nor yet in oviparous quadrupeds: and in the greatest thereof, the crocodile, although we read much of their tears, we find nothing of that motion.
- 1983, Richard Ellis, The Book of Sharks, Knopf, →ISBN, page 138:
- Until fairly recently, no female Somniosus had been observed to be carrying embryos, so it was assumed that this was an oviparous species.
Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
egg laying
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