--- title: The South American area: sloths, anteaters, piranhas and giant otters — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The South American area: sloths, anteaters, piranhas and giant otters», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A two-toed sloth hangs upside down from a branch and does not seem to move for an hour; it is not la --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/) [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 South American area: sloths, antea… # The South American area: sloths, anteaters, piranhas and giant otters Lesson 108 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/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/0/) — A two-toed sloth hangs upside down from a branch and does not seem to move for an hour; it is not lazy but thrifty, because its leaves give so little energy that it saves every bit by moving slowly and keeping its body cool. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/1/) — Its fur is even a little garden: tiny green algae grow in it and moths live in it, so a still, greenish sloth is hard to spot among the leaves. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/2/) — Next door a giant anteater walks on its knuckles to keep its long claws sharp, then flicks a sticky tongue about 60 centimetres long into a termite feeder up to about 150 times a minute, without a single tooth in its mouth. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/3/) — Films show piranhas stripping a cow in seconds, Flash the sloth in Zootopia takes forever to laugh at a joke, and Sid of Ice Age meets dinosaurs; the truth is shy piranhas, sloths that really are slow, and giant ground sloths that lived long after the dinosaurs were gone. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/4/) — Sloths spend almost all their lives hanging upside down and move very slowly to save energy, because leaves give little of it, and they climb down only about once a week to go to the toilet. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/5/) — Tiny algae grow in sloth fur and turn it green, which helps hide the sloth, moths live in the fur too, and a sloth can hold its breath for up to about 40 minutes by slowing its heart. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/6/) — A two-toed sloth has two claws on each front foot and three on each back foot. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/7/) — Giant anteaters have no teeth; a sticky tongue about 60 centimetres long flicks up to about 150 times a minute, they feed quickly at each nest to avoid too many bites, and the stomach grinds the food. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/8/) — Giant anteaters walk on their knuckles to protect long front claws, which rip open hard termite mounds and can fight off a jaguar. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/9/) — Zoos can mix capybaras, rheas, tapirs and anteaters, which live together in the wild and eat different foods; capybaras, the biggest rodents in the world, are so calm that birds and other animals sit on them. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/10/) — Piranhas are mostly shy fish that eat fish, seeds, insects and dead animals; attacks on people are rare and usually small bites, and they swim in groups mostly for safety from their own predators. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/11/) — Giant otters from the Amazon grow up to about 1.8 metres long, live in noisy families that hunt fish together and defend their river from caimans and jaguars, and were hunted almost to extinction for their fur. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/12/) — Rheas are big flightless birds of South America, cousins of ostriches and emus, and a rhea father sits on eggs laid by several females, sometimes over 50. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/13/) — Llamas and alpacas were bred from wild guanacos and vicunas in the Andes thousands of years ago, llamas to carry loads and alpacas for soft wool, and llamas spit when annoyed, mostly at other llamas. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/14/) — Some rainforest poison frogs carry their tadpoles on their backs up to little pools in bromeliad plants, safe from fish, and some mothers come back to feed them unfertilised eggs, because the tiny pool has almost no other food. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/108-the-south-american-area-sloths-anteaters-piranhas-giant-otters/15/) — Sid in Ice Age is a ground sloth; giant ground sloths, some as big as elephants, walked the Americas until about 10,000 years ago, and scientists think people hunting and a changing climate helped wipe them out. - ← previous: [The Asian forest area: giant pandas, red pandas, tapirs and sun bears](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/107-the-asian-forest-area-pandas-red-pandas-tapirs-sun-bears/) - next →: [Behind the scenes: a day with the keepers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/109-behind-the-scenes-a-day-with-the-keepers/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)