Herbivores are organisms that are anatomically and physiologically adapted to eat plant-based foods. Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs^{[page needed]} such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in general are known as primary consumers.

Herbivory usually refers to animals eating plants; fungi, bacteria and protists that feed on living plants are usually termed plant pathogens (plant diseases),and microbes that feed on dead plants are saprotrophs. Flowering plants that obtain nutrition from other living plants are usually termed parasitic plants.

A herbivore is not the same as a vegetarian, a human who voluntarily undertakes a primarily herbivorous diet.

Herbivore is the anglicized form of a modern Latin coinage, herbivora, cited in Charles Lyell's 1830 Principles of Geology.Richard Owen employed the anglicized term in an 1854 work on fossil teeth and skeletons.Herbivora is derived from the Latin herba meaning a small plant or herb, and vora, from vorare, to eat or devour.