--- title: The Amazon river: pink dolphins, flooded forest, giant fish and piranhas — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The Amazon river: pink dolphins, flooded forest, giant fish and piranhas», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: The Amazon is the biggest river on Earth by the water it carries, and every rainy season it rises --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/) [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 Amazon river: pink dolphins, flood… # The Amazon river: pink dolphins, flooded forest, giant fish and piranhas Lesson 155 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 17 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/155-the-amazon-river/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/0/) — The Amazon is the biggest river on Earth by the water it carries, and every rainy season it rises so high that fish swim among the tree tops of a drowned forest. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/1/) — In that brown water a pink dolphin, the boto, twists between branches after fish, and a giant arapaima comes up to gulp air with a loud cough. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/2/) — Cartoons show piranhas stripping a cow to bones in seconds; real piranhas are mostly timid shoaling fish and scavengers, and local children swim in piranha rivers every day. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/3/) — Near the city of Manaus a dark river like tea and a pale river like milky coffee run side by side for kilometres without mixing, because they differ in temperature, speed and what is dissolved in them. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/4/) — The boto, or Amazon river dolphin, can turn its head because its neck bones are not joined, and older botos are often the pinkest because scraped skin heals with pink scar tissue. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/5/) — Every rainy season the Amazon rises by up to ten metres or more and floods huge areas of forest for months. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/6/) — In the flooded forest fish like the tambaqui eat fallen fruit and nuts and spread the seeds, doing the job birds do on land. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/7/) — The arapaima, one of the biggest freshwater fish in the world, must come up every ten to twenty minutes to breathe air, because warm flood water holds little oxygen, and its scales are so tough piranhas struggle to bite them. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/8/) — Giant otters live in noisy family groups of about six to ten that gang up to drive off a caiman, a kind of crocodile, and each has a throat patch as unique as a fingerprint. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/9/) — Piranhas have razor-sharp teeth and tear at dead or injured fish, but most are timid scavengers that shoal for safety. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/10/) — The pororoca is a tidal wave that pushes up the mouth of the Amazon when a strong high tide meets the river, and surfers have ridden it for over thirty minutes. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/11/) — The giant water lily Victoria has floating leaves up to about three metres across, held up by air-filled ribs and guarded by spines underneath; a big leaf can hold a small child if the weight is spread evenly. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/12/) — The matamata turtle looks like dead leaves and catches fish by suddenly opening its huge mouth so water and fish rush in, and swallows each meal whole. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/13/) — The Amazon basin has well over two thousand known kinds of fish, more than the whole Atlantic Ocean, and new ones are found every year. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/14/) — The Amazon carries about a fifth of all the river water that flows into the world's seas. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/16/) — Kingfishers plunge in beak first, and Japan's bullet train was given a kingfisher-shaped nose to make it quieter. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/155-the-amazon-river/17/) — Young hoatzins have claws on their wings, so after dropping into the water to escape a snake they swim and climb back up to the nest. - ← previous: [More animal myths: red rags, camel humps, porcupine arrows, toads and falling cats](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/154-more-animal-myths-from-cartoons/) - next →: [The Amazon canopy: howlers, harpy eagles, toucans, dart frogs and sloth gardens](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/156-the-amazon-canopy/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)