[skav-in-jer] 
| 1. | an animal or other organism that feeds on dead organic matter. |
| 2. | a person who searches through and collects items from discarded material. |
| 3. | a street cleaner. |
| 4. | Chemistry. a chemical that consumes or renders inactive the impurities in a mixture. |
| scav·en·ger (skāv'ən-jər) n.
[Alteration of Middle English scauager, schavager, official charged with street maintenance, from Anglo-Norman scawager, toll collector, from scawage, a tax on the goods of foreign merchants, from Flemish scauwen, to look at, show.] |
scavenger
animal that feeds partly or wholly on the bodies of dead animals. Many invertebrates, such as carrion beetles, live almost entirely on decomposing animal matter. The burying beetles actually enter the dead bodies of small animals before feeding on them underground
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