Foxes and squirrels Lesson 215 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 Two wild animals live right next to us in parks and gardens, and both are cleverer than they look. 2 A squirrel is a rodent with teeth that never stop growing, and in autumn it buries thousands of nuts one by one, finding many again by memory and smell. 3 The ones it forgets grow into new trees, so a squirrel is really a forgetful gardener planting forests, and if another squirrel is watching, it may even pretend to bury a nut to fool the thief. 4 Foxes scream at night, mostly in winter, to attract mates and mark territory, and people sometimes mistake the sound for a person screaming. 5 A fox can hear a small animal under snow, leap high and pounce nose first; some scientists think foxes may use the Earth's magnetic field to aim, but this is not yet proven. 6 Urban foxes live in towns because there is food, shelter and few enemies, but they are wild animals and should not be fed by hand or petted. 7 In many stories foxes are sly tricksters, because real foxes are clever and adaptable, eat almost anything and learn quickly. 8 Foxes belong to the dog family, but they hunt alone and climb like cats, and fox cubs are born blind in an underground den. 9 Squirrels bury thousands of nuts in autumn as food for winter and find many again by memory and smell; the forgotten ones can grow into trees. 10 A squirrel can run down a tree head first because its back ankles turn round so its claws hook into the bark facing up. 11 A squirrel's bushy tail helps it balance and works as a blanket and an umbrella. 12 Studies of grey squirrels found that when another squirrel is watching, a squirrel may pretend to bury a nut to fool the thief, which suggests it plans ahead. 13 Grey squirrels were brought to Britain from North America; they carry a virus deadly to red squirrels and take their food, so reds now live mostly in Scotland and a few other places such as islands. 14 Squirrels are skilled acrobats that solve puzzles to reach bird feeders, and some people build squirrel obstacle courses for fun. 15 Squirrels are rodents whose front teeth grow all the time, about fifteen centimetres a year, and gnawing hard nuts wears them down. ← previous Hedgehogs: spines, hibernation and how to help themnext → Garden birds: robins, blackbirds, tits and feeders↑ back to Biology This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/215-foxes-and-squirrels/