contrafreeloading
contrafreeloading noun: a behaviour, where, when given a choice, an individual animal will choose a food source which requires effort to obtain instead of that which requires little to no effort. Also the present participle and gerund of contrafreeload.
Noun
contrafreeloading (uncountable)
- A behaviour, where, when given a choice, an individual animal will choose a food source which requires effort to obtain instead of that which requires little to no effort.
- There is also a free treat option in the puzzle box, a way for the researchers here to measure something called “contrafreeloading.” This term describes a behavior animals demonstrate when they choose to work for a reward rather than just freeloading from readily available food.2024 November 22, Stephanie Hanes, Melanie Stetson Freeman, “Moody chickens? Playful bumblebees? Science decodes the rich inner lives of animals.”, in The Christian Science Monitor
Also used as
contrafreeloading is also the present participle and gerund of contrafreeload.
Origin of contrafreeloading
From contra- + freeloading.
See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
Questions about contrafreeloading
- What does contrafreeloading mean?
- Contrafreeloading means a behaviour, where, when given a choice, an individual animal will choose a food source which requires effort to obtain instead of that which requires little to no effort.
- What part of speech is contrafreeloading?
- Contrafreeloading is a noun.
Words near contrafreeloading in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: contrafreeloading (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “contrafreeloading.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/contrafreeloading. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.