--- title: Amazon giants and tall tales: anacondas, caimans, electric eels and the candiru — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Amazon giants and tall tales: anacondas, caimans, electric eels and the candiru», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: The Amazon has real giants: the green anaconda, the heaviest snake on Earth, lies in a swa --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/) [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/) / Amazon giants and tall tales: anaconda… # Amazon giants and tall tales: anacondas, caimans, electric eels and the candiru Lesson 158 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 18 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/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/0/) — The Amazon has real giants: the green anaconda, the heaviest snake on Earth, lies in a swamp with only its eyes and nostrils above the water, and the black caiman can grow more than four metres long. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/1/) — Around such animals tall tales grow fast: explorers told of anacondas thirty metres long, and travellers of a tiny fish that swims up into swimmers. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/2/) — A scientist checks a tale by measuring and testing: no anaconda over about seven metres has ever been well measured, and the candiru story rests on a few unclear reports. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/3/) — Cartoons show snakes crushing bones like a garden hose tied in knots; a real anaconda squeezes until the prey's blood stops flowing, and it is a shy animal that mostly avoids people. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/4/) — The green anaconda is the heaviest snake in the world; water holds its weight up, and its eyes and nostrils sit on top of its head. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/5/) — An anaconda kills by squeezing until the prey's blood stops flowing, not by crushing bones. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/6/) — The longest well-measured anacondas are about seven metres; stories of twenty or thirty metres were never proved, and dried skins stretch and look longer than the snake was. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/7/) — The black caiman is the biggest predator of the Amazon, over four metres long, and hunts fish and capybaras at night. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/8/) — When hunters killed most black caimans, piranhas grew in number, because caimans had been eating them. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/9/) — Electric eels can leap up and press their chin against a threat, so the shock goes straight into it; the scientist Kenneth Catania tested this and wrote about it in 2016 and 2017. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/10/) — The candiru is a tiny, thin catfish that feeds on the blood of bigger fish by entering their gills; the story of it attacking people rests on very few unclear reports, and scientists doubt most of them. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/11/) — Caimans rarely attack big grown capybaras, which are too big and alert, and the two often share river banks. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/12/) — The capybara is the biggest rodent alive and can weigh as much as a grown man. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/13/) — The horned frog has a mouth nearly as wide as its body, grabs anything that fits, even mice, and is nicknamed the Pac-Man frog. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/14/) — Some harmless snakes copy the red, black and yellow bands of the deadly coral snake, so predators avoid both, and it is not safe to guess which is which. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/15/) — People cut and burn parts of the Amazon for farms and ranches, and because trees help make the Amazon's rain, when trees go, less rain falls, soil washes away and animals lose homes. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/16/) — The giant armadillo can dig a big burrow in a night, and lizards, ocelots (small wild cats) and birds later shelter in it. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/158-amazon-giants-and-tall-tales/17/) — Caimans' eyes glow red-orange in torchlight because a shiny layer behind the eye reflects light, and guides count caimans by pairs of glowing eyes. - ← previous: [The Amazon forest floor: leafcutters, army ants, tapirs, jaguars and the giant spider](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/157-the-amazon-forest-floor/) - next →: [The Congo rainforest: gorillas, bonobos, okapis and forest elephants](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/159-the-congo-rainforest/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)