--- title: Team players and partners: meerkats, naked mole rats, huddles, cleaners (and do lemmings jump?) — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Team players and partners: meerkats, naked mole rats, huddles, cleaners (and do lemmings jump?)», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Some animals survive because they work as a team, like a football side whe --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/) [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/) / Team players and partners: meerkats, n… # Team players and partners: meerkats, naked mole rats, huddles, cleaners (and do lemmings jump?) Lesson 241 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/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/0/) — Some animals survive because they work as a team, like a football side where one keeps goal while the others run. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/1/) — In a meerkat group one meerkat stands on a rock as a guard while the rest dig for beetles, and grown-ups even teach the pups how to eat a scorpion safely. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/2/) — Naked mole rats live underground with one queen, like bees, and emperor penguin fathers squeeze together in a huge huddle to survive the Antarctic winter. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/3/) — Other teams are made of two different kinds of animal: a little cleaner fish picks parasites off a big fish, and a bird rides a buffalo eating its ticks; both sides gain something. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/4/) — And the story that lemmings jump off cliffs together is not true: it was made popular by a 1958 nature film in which the lemmings were pushed. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/5/) — One meerkat stands guard as a sentinel, watching for eagles and jackals, and gives different alarm calls for danger from the air and from the ground; meerkats that have just eaten well guard more often. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/6/) — Adult meerkats teach pups to eat scorpions step by step: first dead ones, then ones with the sting removed, then live ones. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/7/) — Real meerkats live in groups of up to about 50 in southern Africa, led by a dominant female who has most of the pups while the others help to raise them. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/8/) — Naked mole rats live underground in East Africa in colonies with one queen, like ants and bees; they can live over 30 years and hardly ever get cancer. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/9/) — Naked mole rats pile up in heaps to keep warm, because they are very poor at keeping their own bodies warm; in experiments they survived about 18 minutes with no oxygen. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/11/) — Prairie dogs have alarm calls that seem to describe a predator, even a person's size and the colour of their clothes, as experiments by Con Slobodchikoff suggested. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/12/) — Male emperor penguins huddle in thousands, each with an egg on his feet under a warm fold of belly skin, taking turns at the cold edge; inside the huddle it can be more than 20 degrees warmer than outside, and the fathers eat nothing for about two months. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/13/) — Cleaner wrasse eat parasites off bigger fish at «cleaning stations»; sometimes they cheat by biting healthy skin, and they cheat less when other fish are watching. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/241-team-players-and-partners-meerkats-naked-mole-rats-huddles-cleaners-and-lemmings/14/) — Oxpeckers eat ticks and flies off buffaloes and rhinos and hiss when danger comes, but they also peck at wounds to drink blood, so they are partly helpers and partly pests. - ← previous: [Wolves and teamwork: family packs, the alpha myth and hunting together](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/240-wolves-and-teamwork-family-packs-the-alpha-myth-and-hunting-together/) - next →: [Animal builders: beavers, dams and lodges](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/242-animal-builders-beavers-dams-and-lodges/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)