Word.ws English Dictionary

surplus killing

surplus killing noun: the behaviour of a predator that kills more prey than it can immediately eat and then caches or abandons the remainder.

Noun

surplus killing (countable and uncountable, plural surplus killings)

  1. The behaviour of a predator that kills more prey than it can immediately eat and then caches or abandons the remainder.

Forms of surplus killing

pluralsurplus killings

Origin of surplus killing

Coined by Dutch biologist Hans Kruuk.

Questions about surplus killing

What does surplus killing mean?
Surplus killing means the behaviour of a predator that kills more prey than it can immediately eat and then caches or abandons the remainder.
What part of speech is surplus killing?
Surplus killing is a noun.
What is the plural of surplus killing?
The plural of surplus killing is surplus killings.

Words near surplus killing in the dictionary

  1. surpliced
  2. surplices
  3. surplus
  4. surplus budget
  5. surplus budgets
  6. surplus killing
  7. surplus killings
  8. surplus labour
  9. surplus to requirements
  10. surplus value
  11. surplus values

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: surplus killing (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “surplus killing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/surplus_killing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.