pedophagy

Pedophagy, from the Greek paidos, meaning child, and phagein, meaning to eat, is a term used in ecology and ethology to describe the feeding on juvenile individuals. It denotes a predation or scavenging pattern in which an organism consumes young or immature life stages, either of the same species (conspecific pedophagy) or of other species (heterospecific pedophagy).

The concept is used to describe feeding on juvenile life stages such as fry, larvae, hatchlings, or nestlings. Pedophagy is observed across diverse taxa, including fishes, birds, insects, and arachnids, and can be a normal part of a predator's diet, a specialized feeding strategy, or a consequence of opportunistic feeding when juveniles are abundant.

Ecological implications: By reducing juvenile survival, pedophagy can influence population dynamics, juvenile recruitment, and predator–prey interactions. Predators may time attacks to vulnerable life stages, and prey species may evolve defenses such as cryptic behavior, early reproduction, or nest protection in response.

In scientific usage, pedophagy is a neutral descriptive term. It should not be conflated with paedophilia, which refers to sexual interest in children and is a separate concept.