--- title: Defences: tricks and myths: playing dead, dropping tails, ink, and do ostriches bury their heads? — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Defences: tricks and myths: playing dead, dropping tails, ink, and do ostriches bury their heads?», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Some animals escape not with spikes or poison but with a trick, like a m --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/) [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/) / Defences: tricks and myths: playing de… # Defences: tricks and myths: playing dead, dropping tails, ink, and do ostriches bury their heads? Lesson 249 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/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/0/) — Some animals escape not with spikes or poison but with a trick, like a magician who makes you look the wrong way. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/1/) — A lizard leaves its wriggling tail behind for the cat, a squid vanishes in a cloud of ink, a moth flashes two big fake eyes, and an opossum lies so still and smelly that it seems dead. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/2/) — But cartoons have spread tricks that animals never do: ostriches do not bury their heads, a chameleon cannot turn tartan, and a camel's hump is not a water tank. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/3/) — The cartoon ostrich comes from a real sight: an ostrich lowers its head to turn its eggs in a ground nest or lies flat to hide, and from far away it looks headless. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/4/) — Good science means checking the story against what real animals do. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/5/) — Ostriches do not bury their heads in sand; they lower their heads to turn eggs in their ground nest or lie flat to hide, and an ostrich can run at about 70 kilometres an hour and kick hard enough to hurt a lion. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/8/) — Squids and octopuses squirt ink to hide or to make a blob shaped like a fake squid, the ink can dull a predator's senses of smell and taste, and people use squid and cuttlefish ink for writing and in black pasta. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/9/) — A pufferfish swallows water to blow up to several times its size, which makes it hard to swallow, but this is tiring and stressful, so it does not do it for fun. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/10/) — Big eyespots on a moth's wings can startle a bird, and small eyespots near the wing tips draw pecks away from the head; butterflies with a torn eyespot often survive. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/12/) — Stick insects look like twigs and sway like them in the wind, so birds hunting by sight miss them; the longest insect known is a stick insect from China, over 60 centimetres with its legs stretched out. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/13/) — Goldfish can remember things for months: they learn to push levers, come to the sound of feeding and recognise colours, shapes and even music, so the three-second memory is a myth. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/14/) — Bulls cannot tell red from green: they charge the moving cape, not its colour, and a blue cape waved the same way would work too; never go into a field with a bull. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/15/) — Most birds have a weak sense of smell and will not abandon a chick because a person touched it; the real danger is moving the chick away from where its parents feed it, and a fluffy bird hopping on the ground is often a fledgling whose parents are near. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/249-defences-tricks-and-myths-playing-dead-dropping-tails-ink-and-ostriches/16/) — A camel's hump stores fat, not water, which gives energy when food is short, and the hump sags as the fat is used up; camels save water by hardly sweating and making dry dung, and can drink up to 100 litres at once. - ← previous: [Defences: skunks, porcupines, hedgehogs and armour](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/248-defences-skunks-porcupines-hedgehogs-and-armour/) - next →: [Plants deeper: roots and how they drink, hold and push](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/250-plants-deeper-roots-and-how-they-drink-hold-and-push/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)