Sciuridae
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9.9
- noun
- /ˌsaɪjʊˈrɪdiː/
- Specialized
- Researchers study the Sciuridae family to understand the evolutionary adaptations of rodents.
Examples
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The family Sciuridae includes various species of squirrels commonly found in forests.
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Family, Sciuridae or squirrel.
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And that was a blessing too, because the copy of Sciuridae in History she'd ordered from a mail-order house in Connecticut had finally arrived, and she was just sitting down to leaf through it, already fascinated by the pictures of mummified squirrels dug out of the ruins at Pompeii when the bell rang again.
Fiction book (1997) -
In the Sciuridae family, chipmunks are well-known for their cheek pouches used to store food.
Synonyms
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1.0
A small animal with a long bushy tail that lives in trees and eats nuts and seeds
Surface Forms
Morphology
Sciuridae = Sciurus (opaque) = sciur + idae
The family-name suffix '-idae' follows a specialized scientific naming rule, so most learners would not infer the meaning even if they recognized the genus name.
Etymology
Sciuridae comes from the old Greek word skiouros, built from skia 'shadow' and oura 'tail', and from the Latin sciurus, which gave us the English word 'squirrel'. A helpful way to remember it is to picture a squirrel's big bushy tail making a shadow, because Sciuridae is the family name for all true squirrels.