He is famous for co-authoring a comprehensive textbook of entomology titled An Introduction to the Study of Insects which continues to be in print with newer editions.

An entomologist with a specialization on the Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies), he also took a great interest in animal sounds and published numerous studies on bird vocalization.

He studied at Otterbein College before joining the Ohio State University from where he obtained a BSc in 1928, an MSc in 1930 and a PhD in 1935.

[1] During the Second World War, he served in the navy intelligence where he may have learned about the use of a "vibralyzer" a system developed by the Kay Electric Company (founded by former Bell Labs engineers Harry Foster and Elmo Crump) for generating visual representations of speech.

[2] After the war Borror took an interest in avian vocalizations and in 1947 he obtained a "portable", in that it had a handle, recorder that weighed 30 pounds and had a 250 foot long power cord.