--- title: Strange islands: Komodo dragons, the dodo, red crabs, kakapos, giants and dwarfs — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Strange islands: Komodo dragons, the dodo, red crabs, kakapos, giants and dwarfs», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: An island is like a small world cut off by the sea: only the animals that can fly, swim o --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/) [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/) / Strange islands: Komodo dragons, the d… # Strange islands: Komodo dragons, the dodo, red crabs, kakapos, giants and dwarfs Lesson 181 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/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/0/) — An island is like a small world cut off by the sea: only the animals that can fly, swim or float there arrive, and then they change on their own for thousands of years. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/1/) — With little food, big animals slowly become smaller over many generations, so elephants on some islands shrank to the size of a pony. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/2/) — With no hunters around, small animals can become bigger and birds can stop flying, like the heavy kakapo parrot that walks through the New Zealand forest at night. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/3/) — That is why island animals are so strange, and also why they are in such danger when ships bring rats, cats and pigs they have never had to fear. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/4/) — The Komodo dragon of Indonesia is the largest living lizard, up to about three metres long; it ambushes deer and pigs, and its bite has venom that stops blood from clotting. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/5/) — People once thought germs in the Komodo dragon's mouth killed its prey, but scientists found it has venom glands in its jaw. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/6/) — The dodo was a big flightless pigeon from Mauritius; it died out in the late 1600s after sailors brought rats, pigs and monkeys that ate its eggs, and people hunted it too. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/7/) — The dodo was not stupid; it had lived with no hunters, so it had no reason to fear people. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/8/) — Every year tens of millions of red crabs on Christmas Island march from the forest to the sea to lay eggs, when the rains come and the moon is right; people close roads and build crab bridges for them. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/10/) — On islands such as Sicily and Crete, elephants once shrank to the size of a pony; some scientists think their skulls, with one big hole for the trunk, gave rise to stories of one-eyed giants. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/11/) — On islands with no predators, some small animals become giants, like the giant rats of Flores and giant tortoises; this is called island gigantism. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/12/) — The Jaragua dwarf gecko of the Caribbean is one of the smallest reptiles, small enough to curl up on a coin. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/13/) — Hawaiian honeycreepers all came from one kind of finch and now have many beak shapes, like curved beaks for sipping nectar; many are endangered because mosquitoes spread bird malaria, and many now survive only high in the cold mountains, where mosquitoes do not live well. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/15/) — A kiwi lays an egg about one fifth of the mother's own weight, so the chick hatches strong and can look after itself early, and the kiwi is the only bird with nostrils at the tip of its beak, used to smell worms. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/181-strange-islands-komodo-dragons-the-dodo-red-crabs-kakapos-giants-and-dwarfs/16/) — Island foxes on California's Channel Islands are about the size of a house cat; they were saved from near extinction partly by moving golden eagles away. - ← previous: [The Galápagos: giant tortoises, sea iguanas, Darwin's finches and tame sea lions](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/180-the-galapagos-giant-tortoises-sea-iguanas-darwins-finches-and-tame-sea-lions/) - next →: [Deserts of the world: fennec foxes, fog-drinking beetles, camels and silver ants](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/182-deserts-of-the-world-fennec-foxes-fog-drinking-beetles-camels-and-silver-ants/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)