--- title: How real mice survive: squeezing, climbing and hiding — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «How real mice survive: squeezing, climbing and hiding», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Almost everyone wants to eat a mouse: cats, owls, foxes, weasels, snakes and hawks. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/) [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/) / How real mice survive: squeezing, clim… # How real mice survive: squeezing, climbing and hiding Lesson 120 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/120-how-real-mice-survive/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/0/) — Almost everyone wants to eat a mouse: cats, owls, foxes, weasels, snakes and hawks. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/1/) — So a mouse's whole life is about not being seen, not being caught and having lots of babies. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/2/) — A real mouse runs along the edge of the kitchen wall, not across the open floor, with its whiskers brushing the wall, so a crack or a pipe to escape into is always close. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/3/) — At the first strange noise it freezes, because a still mouse is hard to spot; if danger comes closer it bolts, jumps, climbs up a rough wall or vanishes up the inside of a pipe. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/4/) — Unlike Jerry, a real mouse cannot outsmart a cat with an iron, but it has its own tricks: teeth that never stop growing, songs too high for us to hear, and secret food stores for the winter. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/5/) — Mice keep their whiskers touching a wall as they run and avoid open floors, and pest experts put traps along walls because mice travel there. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/6/) — A house mouse can jump about 30 centimetres straight up, many times its own height, and can climb rough walls and run along thin wires using its tail for balance. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/7/) — Mice sweep their whiskers back and forth many times a second to feel the shape of things around them, which matters because they are mostly active at night. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/8/) — Many small animals freeze first and run second, because many hunters notice movement more than shape; mice even avoid the smell of cats they have never met. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/9/) — Mice have four front teeth, the incisors, which keep growing all their lives and are worn down by gnawing; mice can gnaw wood, plastic and even electric cables, which can cause fires; rats, squirrels, beavers and rabbits also have front teeth that never stop growing. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/10/) — A mother mouse can have a litter of about six to eight babies every few weeks; the babies are born pink and blind and can look after themselves at about three weeks old. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/11/) — Mice call to each other in sounds too high for people to hear, called ultrasound, and male mice sing tiny songs that scientists record and slow down. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/12/) — Owls, foxes, cats, weasels, snakes and hawks all hunt mice, and a family of barn owls can eat over a thousand mice and voles in a year. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/13/) — Wood mice and field mice store seeds, nuts and berries in burrows or under logs for winter, and forgotten seeds can grow into new plants. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/14/) — Mice groom themselves many times a day, licking their paws and wiping their faces, ears and whiskers, but wild mice can still carry germs that make people ill. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/120-how-real-mice-survive/15/) — Mice use pipes, cables and gaps behind kitchen units as hidden roads, and may visit the same food many times in a night, taking only tiny bits each time. - ← previous: [How real cats hunt: stalking, waiting and pouncing](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/119-how-real-cats-hunt/) - next →: [Spike and Tom: real dogs and cats, enemies or friends?](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/121-spike-and-tom-real-dogs-and-cats/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)