Defensive vomiting is a symptom of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa in which a person who has drastically over-eaten (generally in reaction to previous extreme dieting) vomits as a reaction to an excess of food which the body is not prepared to handle. It is often seen in children, shortly after holidays such as Halloween and Easter.
Defensive vomiting can also refer to a tactic used by some animals. Examples include the turkey vulture, which may vomit up foul-smelling semi-digested meat to ward off predators.
Famous quotes containing the word defensive:
“We find that even the parents who justify spanking to themselves are defensive and embarrassed about it....I suspect that deep in the memory of every parent are the feelings that had attended his own childhood spankings, the feelings of humiliation, of helplessness, of submission through fear. The parent who finds himself spanking his own child cannot dispel the ghosts of his own childhood.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)