--- title: The polar zone: polar bears — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The polar zone: polar bears», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Stand at the underwater window of the polar zone and a polar bear glides past, paddling with front paws as big as dinner plates and steering w --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/) [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 polar zone: polar bears # The polar zone: polar bears Lesson 105 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](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/0/) — Stand at the underwater window of the polar zone and a polar bear glides past, paddling with front paws as big as dinner plates and steering with its back legs, because in the wild it swims between pieces of sea ice to hunt seals. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/1/) — The bear looks snow white, but each hair is clear and hollow and only looks white because it scatters light, like snow does, and underneath the fur the skin is black and the fat is thick. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/2/) — Polar bears need the sea ice: they wait on it for seals to come up to breathe, and as the climate warms the ice melts earlier and freezes later, so the bears must go longer without food. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/3/) — Adverts show polar bears sipping fizzy drinks and cartoons put them next to penguins, but real polar bears hardly drink at all and live in the Arctic, at the opposite end of the Earth from wild penguins. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/4/) — Polar bears are strong swimmers that paddle with huge front paws and steer with the back legs, and one bear was tracked swimming for over nine days without stopping. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/5/) — Polar bear hairs are clear and hollow and look white because they scatter light; the skin underneath is black, and in some warm zoos tiny algae growing inside the hairs have turned the fur green. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/6/) — Keepers give polar bears ice blocks with fish, meat or fruit frozen inside, so breaking the ice keeps them busy, a bit like hunting; a wild bear can smell a seal under the snow from a long way off, often said to be about a kilometre. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/7/) — Wild polar bears roam huge distances, so they need deep, cool water and lots of space; small concrete pits in older zoos made many bears stressed, so many zoos stopped keeping them and newer ones built big areas with grass, hills and deep pools. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/8/) — Arctic sea ice now melts earlier and freezes later as the climate warms, so polar bears have less time to hunt seals, though they can go months without eating while they wait. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/9/) — Polar bears are the largest meat-eaters on land and may see people as food, and the Canadian town of Churchill has a bear patrol that people call instead of going near a bear, and a «polar bear jail» where bears that come into town are kept until they can be flown away. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/10/) — Polar bear cubs are born in a snow den in winter, blind and weighing less than a kilogram, and stay with their mother about two years; she does not eat for months while feeding them milk. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/11/) — The soles of a polar bear's paws have fur and small bumps that grip the ice and keep the feet warm. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/12/) — Polar bears evolved from brown bears, scientists think a few hundred thousand years ago, and polar bears and grizzlies have met in Canada and had «pizzly» cubs. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/13/) — Polar bears clean themselves carefully after eating and roll in snow in summer, because clean fur keeps them warm and dirty fur lets cold and water reach the skin. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/105-the-polar-zone-polar-bears/14/) — Polar bears drink very little: seawater is too salty and fresh water is frozen most of the year, so they get most of their water from breaking down the fat of seals. - ← previous: [Koalas, wombats, Tasmanian devils and the platypus](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/104-koalas-wombats-tasmanian-devils-and-the-platypus/) - next →: [The polar zone: arctic foxes, snowy owls, lemmings and reindeer](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/106-the-polar-zone-arctic-foxes-snowy-owls-lemmings-reindeer/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)