--- title: Madagascar: chameleons, leaf-tailed geckos, tenrecs, baobabs and a moth Darwin predicted — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Madagascar: chameleons, leaf-tailed geckos, tenrecs, baobabs and a moth Darwin predicted», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Madagascar is a laboratory of the strange: about half of all the world's chameleo --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/) [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/) / Madagascar: chameleons, leaf-tailed ge… # Madagascar: chameleons, leaf-tailed geckos, tenrecs, baobabs and a moth Darwin predicted Lesson 164 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 14 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/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/0/) — Madagascar is a laboratory of the strange: about half of all the world's chameleon kinds, a gecko that is a dead leaf with eyes, a beetle with a neck like a crane, and trees that look planted upside down. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/1/) — A chameleon's tongue shoots out faster than you can blink, longer than its own body, and snaps back with a cricket stuck to its sticky tip, like a party blower that grabs a sweet. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/2/) — Cartoons show chameleons turning tartan on a tartan blanket; a real chameleon changes colour mostly to show its mood and signal to others, and to warm up or cool down. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/3/) — In 1862 Charles Darwin looked at an orchid whose nectar sat at the bottom of a tube about thirty centimetres long and said a moth with a tongue that long must exist; it was found after his death, and it was named praedicta, meaning predicted. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/4/) — A chameleon's two eyes can swivel separately, and chameleons shoot out their tongues in a fraction of a second, faster than a person can blink, and Madagascar has about half of all the chameleon kinds in the world. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/5/) — Chameleons change colour mostly to show their feelings and signal to other chameleons, and to warm up or cool down; they cannot copy any pattern they sit on. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/6/) — Brookesia nana, described in 2021, is one of the smallest reptiles known, small enough to sit on a fingertip, and was found by scientists searching leaves with torches at night. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/7/) — The satanic leaf-tailed gecko has a body and tail that look like a dry curled leaf with nibbled edges; it has no eyelids and licks its eyes clean. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/8/) — The male giraffe weevil has a neck several times longer than its body, and it is found only in Madagascar. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/10/) — Tenrecs look like hedgehogs or shrews but are actually related to elephants and aardvarks, African animals that dig for ants. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/11/) — Baobabs have huge fat trunks that store water and short branches that look like roots; six of the eight kinds of baobab grow only in Madagascar. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/13/) — Madagascar hissing cockroaches hiss by pushing air out of breathing holes on their sides, not by rubbing body parts as most noisy insects do; like all insects, they have six legs. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/14/) — The Madagascar periwinkle contains chemicals used to make medicines for some childhood cancers, which shows why losing rare plants may mean losing future medicines. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/164-madagascar-chameleons-geckos-tenrecs-baobabs-and-darwins-moth/15/) — Darwin predicted a moth with a tongue about thirty centimetres long from the shape of the star orchid; the moth was found in 1903, after his death, and named with the word praedicta, meaning predicted. - ← previous: [Madagascar: lemurs of every kind and the fossa](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/163-madagascar-lemurs-of-every-kind-and-the-fossa/) - next →: [The Australian outback: red kangaroos, emus, thorny devils and runaway camels and toads](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/165-the-australian-outback-kangaroos-emus-thorny-devils-and-runaway-toads/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)