--- title: The African savanna area: hippos, meerkats, ostriches, wild dogs and hyenas — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The African savanna area: hippos, meerkats, ostriches, wild dogs and hyenas», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: The second half of the African area is full of animals that cartoons get wrong: the hippo is n --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / The African savanna area: hippos, meer… # The African savanna area: hippos, meerkats, ostriches, wild dogs and hyenas Lesson 102 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](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/0/) — The second half of the African area is full of animals that cartoons get wrong: the hippo is no ballerina, the ostrich does not hide its head, and the hyena is not just a sneaky thief. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/1/) — A hippo looks lazy and round, but it opens its mouth wide enough to fit a child, walks along the bottom of the pool because it cannot really swim, and guards its water so fiercely that it is one of the most dangerous animals to people in Africa. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/2/) — Next door the meerkats run a lookout: one stands on a rock on its back legs while the others dig for beetles and scorpions, and if an eagle comes the guard gives a special call and everyone dives into the burrow. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/3/) — Timon the meerkat and the giggling hyenas of The Lion King, and Gloria the hippo of Madagascar, are fun, but the real animals are cleverer and stranger than their cartoon copies. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/4/) — A hippo can open its mouth to about 150 degrees as a warning to rivals, and its long lower tusks grow all its life and are for fighting, because hippos eat grass. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/5/) — Hippos cannot really swim; they are so heavy that they sink, so they walk or bounce along the bottom and push up to breathe. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/6/) — Hippos ooze a red-orange liquid sometimes called «blood sweat», which is neither blood nor sweat but works as sunscreen and may help stop germs in cuts. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/7/) — The closest living relatives of hippos are whales and dolphins. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/8/) — In a meerkat group one animal at a time stands guard on a high spot, and its alarm calls tell the others whether danger comes from the sky, like an eagle, or from the ground, like a jackal. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/9/) — Meerkats have thin fur and dark skin on their bellies, so after cold desert nights they warm up by sunbathing belly to the sun; they also eat scorpions, often biting off the sting first. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/10/) — Ostriches do not bury their heads in sand; they lower their heads to turn their eggs in a ground nest or lie flat to hide, and a scared ostrich runs at up to about 70 kilometres per hour or kicks. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/11/) — The ostrich is the biggest living bird and lays the biggest egg, as heavy as about 20 to 24 hen's eggs, with a shell strong enough for a person to stand on. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/12/) — An ostrich's eye is about 5 centimetres across, bigger than its brain, and it has only two toes on each foot, which helps it run fast. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/13/) — African wild dogs, also called painted dogs, live in close packs, greet each other with squeaks and licks before a hunt, and share food with pups and with sick or old members. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/14/) — Warthogs have short necks and long legs, so they kneel on thick pads on their wrists to graze short grass, and they back into burrows so their tusks face out; Pumbaa in The Lion King is a warthog. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/102-the-african-savanna-area-hippos-meerkats-ostriches/15/) — Spotted hyenas giggle when nervous or excited and whoop to call the clan; they catch most of their own food, lions often steal from them, and their clans are led by females, which are bigger than males. - ← previous: [The African savanna area: giraffes, zebras, rhinos and antelopes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/101-the-african-savanna-area-giraffes-zebras-rhinos/) - next →: [The Australian walkabout: kangaroos, emus, wallabies and dingoes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/103-the-australian-walkabout-kangaroos-emus-wallabies-dingoes/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)