Wolves and dogs Lesson 24 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 16 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 Every pet dog, from a tiny chihuahua to a Great Dane, comes from wolves that began living alongside people more than 15,000 years ago; people kept the friendliest ones, and over thousands of years they became dogs. 1 A wolf pack is usually just a family, a mother and father with their young, and in deep snow they trot in single file, stepping in each other's tracks to save energy. 2 Your dog keeps the wolf's tools: a cold wet nose with hundreds of millions of smell receptors, ears that turn to catch the car coming home before anyone else hears it, and a tongue for panting because dogs hardly sweat. 4 Wolves live in packs that are usually a family: a mother, a father and their young of different ages. 5 The idea of an alpha wolf fighting its way to the top came from captive wolves; wild packs are mostly parents leading their family. 6 Wolves howl to tell the pack where they are and warn other packs away, and a howl can carry several kilometres; they do not howl at the moon. 7 Wolves chase deer, elk and bison and pick the weak, old or sick, yet most hunts, often more than eight in ten, fail. 8 Wolves returned to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 after about 70 years; elk grazed less by the rivers, trees grew back and beavers returned, a chain called a trophic cascade. 9 All pet dogs come from wolves tamed probably more than 15,000 years ago, and a chihuahua and a Great Dane are the same species. 10 A dog's nose has hundreds of millions of smell receptors, while a human nose has about 5 or 6 million. 11 A dog's nose is wet with a thin layer of mucus that catches smell particles, and every dog's nose print is unique. 12 Dogs hardly sweat through their skin, so they cool down by panting: water dries off the tongue and takes heat with it, which is called evaporation, and it works less well on a humid day, when the air is already full of water; their only real sweat glands are in their paw pads. 13 A loose wide tail wag usually means a happy dog, but a stiff high wag can mean the dog is tense. 14 Dogs hear sounds much quieter and higher than people can and turn their ears with many muscles. 15 Dogs see mostly blues and yellows because they have two kinds of colour cells instead of our three, so red and green look much alike to them. 16 Never approach a strange dog or a wild animal, because even friendly-looking ones may bite if scared or protecting food or young; to stroke a dog, ask its owner first and let the dog sniff your hand. ← previous Bearsnext → Horses, zebras and donkeys↑ back to Biology This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/24-wolves-and-dogs/