--- title: Cartoon pets and animal myths put right — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Cartoon pets and animal myths put right», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Cartoons are full of animals that talk, cook and win every chase, and that is fine, because they are stories, not nature films. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/) [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/) / Cartoon pets and animal myths put right # Cartoon pets and animal myths put right Lesson 228 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 13 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/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/0/) — Cartoons are full of animals that talk, cook and win every chase, and that is fine, because they are stories, not nature films. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/2/) — Think of Tom chasing Jerry: real cats do hunt mice, but a real mouse would rather nibble seeds than a wedge of holey cheese. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/3/) — Behind almost every cartoon animal there is a real animal that is just as interesting, and a scientist's job is to sort the true bits from the funny bits. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/4/) — Real cats are carnivores: they need meat, cannot live on pasta like Garfield, and cannot even taste sweet things. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/5/) — Real dogs cannot talk like Scooby Doo, because their mouths and brains are not built for speech, though Scooby is a real breed, the Great Dane. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/6/) — Real cats are a big danger to small birds; Tweety always escapes, but real birds often do not. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/7/) — Lemmings do not jump off cliffs on purpose; a 1958 nature film staged it by pushing them over the edge, and in real life some drown when crowds of them cross rivers. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/8/) — Mice prefer grains, seeds and sweet foods to cheese, so peanut butter works better in humane traps. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/9/) — Dogs bury food to save it for later, as wild dogs do, and may forget where they buried it. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/12/) — Real rabbits do thump their back feet like Thumper, as a warning to others. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/13/) — Bulls cannot see red well; a bull charges at the movement of the cape, and red is just the traditional colour. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/14/) — Owls are expert hunters with superb hearing, but crows and parrots solve much harder puzzles than owls. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/228-cartoon-pets-and-animal-myths-put-right/15/) — Real hedgehogs walk slowly and can trot, but cannot race; Sonic was named for speed, not for biology. - ← previous: [The vet](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/227-the-vet/) - next →: [Echolocation: how bats see with sound](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/229-echolocation-how-bats-see-with-sound/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)