Phagy

Phagy or phagia is an ecological or behavioral term that is used to identify particular nutritional systems or feeding behaviors. The suffixes -phagy, -phagous and -phage are used to name different types of phagy or animals that perform it, which include:


 * Monophagy &mdash; feeding on a single type of food (f.e. a single plant species)
 * Oligophagy &mdash; feeding on few specific types of food (f.e. a single plant genus)
 * Polyphagy &mdash; feeding on many kinds of food (f.e. all (or almost all) the species of a single plant family)
 * Phytophagy &mdash; the eating of plants
 * Xylophagy &mdash; the eating of wood
 * Foliophagy &mdash; the eating of leaves
 * Oophagy &mdash; the eating of eggs
 * Rhizophagy &mdash; the eating of roots
 * Ophiophagy &mdash; feeding on snakes
 * Hematophagy &mdash; feeding on blood
 * Coprophagy &mdash; feeding on faeces
 * Geophagy &mdash; feeding on earth
 * Bacteriophagous &mdash; feeding on bacteria
 * Necrophagy &mdash; feeding on dead animals
 * Saprophagy &mdash; feeding on non-living organic material


 * See Pica (disorder) for some more.

Phagy can also be used to name eating in a specified manner, normal or abnormal (for example dysphagia, a dysfunction of deglutition).

The term comes from Greek language phagein, to eat; with Indo-European language roots in bhag.