How animals hunt Lesson 52 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 17 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 A hunter has to find its food, get close, catch it and hold on, and every hunter has its own plan: some chase, some sneak, some set traps and some simply wait. 1 The cheetah is the sprinter, the wolf pack is the long-distance team, the python and the praying mantis are the patient ambushers, and the spider and the anglerfish are trap builders. 2 Watch a pet cat with a toy mouse: it creeps low, freezes, wiggles its bottom, then pounces; that wiggle is the cat testing its footing and getting ready to push off hard, exactly like a lion in the long grass. 3 Most hunts fail, even for lions, so hunters must be clever with their energy: a cheetah can only sprint for a few seconds, and a python can wait for days because it needs to eat only every few weeks. 4 Cartoons show the lion as king of the jungle, hunting alone while the lionesses rest; in real life lions live on grassy savannah, and the lionesses do most of the hunting, working together. 5 A cheetah can reach about 100 km per hour, faster than any other land animal, but only for about 20 to 30 seconds before it overheats and must rest; while it lies panting, hyenas or lions often steal its catch. 6 In a lion pride the lionesses do most of the hunting, often working together to surround zebras, wildebeest or buffalo, and most lion hunts fail. 7 Barn owls have soft fringed edges on their feathers that make their flight almost silent, and their ears sit at different heights, so a sound reaches each ear a little differently and they can tell up from down and find a mouse by sound alone. 8 An orb-weaver spider waits on its sticky web and feels the vibrations of trapped insects through tiny hairs on its legs; for its weight, spider silk is stronger than steel. 9 A chameleon's tongue shoots out to about twice its body length in a fraction of a second, released like a stretched elastic band, with a sticky cup at the tip. 10 A kingfisher dives head first with very little splash, and Japan's bullet train nose was redesigned to copy its bill, making it quieter in tunnels; water bends light, so a fish looks to be in a slightly different place from where it really is, and a kingfisher learns to aim right. 11 A female deep-sea anglerfish has a glowing lure on her head, made by light-giving bacteria, and small fish in the dark swim towards it. 13 Lying still uses very little energy, so a big python can go weeks between meals, while a tiny shrew burns energy so fast that it must eat every few hours. 14 Grey wolves hunt in family packs, chasing deer, elk or moose over long distances; they are built for stamina rather than speed, and they often pick out a young, old or sick animal that will tire first and is less likely to hurt them. 15 Some dolphins and humpback whales blow a ring of bubbles round a shoal so the fish, which will not swim through bubbles, bunch up inside, and dolphins also find fish by echolocation. 16 Cats are ambush hunters, and even well-fed pet cats still hunt because the urge to chase and pounce is built in. 17 A praying mantis waits without moving, then grabs insects with spiky front legs in less than a tenth of a second, and it can turn its head to look over its shoulder. ← previous How animals hide: camouflage and mimicrynext → How animals defend themselves↑ back to Biology This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/52-how-animals-hunt/