--- title: The city as a habitat — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The city as a habitat», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: To a wild animal a city is not concrete and cars, it is a strange new landscape: tall buildings are cliffs, railway banks are hedges, gardens are me --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/) [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 city as a habitat # The city as a habitat Lesson 14 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/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/0/) — To a wild animal a city is not concrete and cars, it is a strange new landscape: tall buildings are cliffs, railway banks are hedges, gardens are meadows, and bins are a free buffet. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/1/) — Pigeons nest on station ledges as their rock dove ancestors nested on sea cliffs, peregrine falcons nest on cathedral towers and dive on those pigeons, and foxes trot down quiet streets at night. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/2/) — The animals that win in cities are the clever, bold, eat-almost-anything kind: crows, gulls, rats, foxes and raccoons learn fast and try new things. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/3/) — City life changes animals too: robins sing under streetlamps at night, and some great tits sing higher to be heard over the traffic. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/4/) — City animals are wild animals, so watch them, but do not feed, chase or touch them. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/5/) — City pigeons are descended from wild rock doves that nest on sea cliffs, and ledges on tall buildings are like cliffs to them; a war pigeon called Cher Ami carried a message that helped save nearly 200 soldiers in 1918. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/6/) — Red foxes live in many cities, like London and Bristol, eating worms, rats, fruit and scraps, with dens in gardens, parks and railway banks. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/7/) — Peregrine falcons nest on tall buildings like the cliffs they use in the wild and hunt city pigeons; a diving peregrine can go faster than 300 kilometres per hour, the fastest animal on Earth. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/8/) — Some city robins sing at night under streetlamps, because the light tricks them and night is quieter; great tits in noisy cities sing higher notes than forest great tits. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/9/) — Dandelion seeds float on tiny parachutes into pavement cracks, where dust and water collect, and a long taproot finds water deep down. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/10/) — Brown rats eat almost anything, have many babies and can squeeze through holes about the size of a coin; the saying that you are never more than 2 metres from a rat is a myth, and rats can carry disease, so never touch them. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/11/) — Herring gulls learn that people carry food and swoop to grab it; scientists in England found gulls were slower to grab food when a person stared straight at them. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/12/) — Small bats like pipistrelles hunt insects around street lamps by echolocation, shouting and listening for echoes; bats are not blind, and one pipistrelle can eat thousands of midges in a night. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/14/) — Carrion crows in Sendai, Japan, were filmed putting nuts on the road for cars to crack and picking up the pieces at the red light; crows can recognise human faces for years. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/14-the-city-as-a-habitat/15/) — House sparrows have nested in holes in buildings beside people for thousands of years, but they have become much rarer in some cities like London, and scientists are still working out why. - ← previous: [Mountains: life as you climb higher](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/13-mountains-life-as-you-climb/) - next →: [Monkeys: kinds, tails and troops](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/15-monkeys-kinds-tails-and-troops/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)