planimal
nounEtymology Blend of plant + animal.
1
Something that has characteristics of both plants and animals.
- Such a 'planimal' could move itself over the ground only at a rate considerably slower than that of a terrestrial slug but if other plants could not move at all, this would be sufficient.1968, Alta: University of Birmingham Review - Issues 7-11, page 136:
- This week my planimal friend Daedalus continues his exploration of human symbiosis with useful organisms. Those green flatworms, permeated with photosynthesizing algae, represent a distinct advance on his plumbed-in photosynthetic sandwich-boards of last weak.1970, New Scientist - Volume 47, page 649:
3 more examples
- Overseas scientists have taken an animal cell and crossed it with a cell from a tobacco plant to produce a half-animal, half-plant creature known as a planimal.1979, Christiaan Barnard, The best medicine, page 58:
- That is our Syncytial Planimal, genetically engineered to give us both plant and animal proteins.2014, T. J. Bass, The Godwhale:
- The planimal was the first post-plant, followed by the versatile, Octopamine-blessed animant, and only then came the animals.2015, Anand Madhu, Brain Function and Dysfunction, page 26: