The specific epithet, windscheffeli, is in honor of Wally Windscheffel, who discovered the specimen along with Charles E. Safris of Des Moines, Iowa.

This indicates that specializations associated with feeding on ants or termites have independently evolved many times in mammals: in Fruitafossor, anteaters, numbats, aardwolves, aardvarks, pangolins, and echidnas.

This type of tooth is present today in insectivorous mammals, particularly those that are highly specialized to feed on colonial insects.

The features of the front limb indicate that the animal was fossorial, employing scratch digging like modern moles, gophers, and spiny anteaters.

This feature also supports the idea that they were myrmecophagous, as modern mammals employ this technique to break into termite mounds.

The eutriconodont Spinolestes may have also occupied a similar ecological niche, and like Fruitafossor it has xenarthrous vertebrae convergent with those of xenarthrans.