--- title: Animal myths put right: elephants and mice, lemmings, ostriches and goldfish — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Animal myths put right: elephants and mice, lemmings, ostriches and goldfish», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Animal myths are like a story passed along a line of children in a game of whispers: somethin --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/) [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/) / Animal myths put right: elephants and… # Animal myths put right: elephants and mice, lemmings, ostriches and goldfish Lesson 295 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 16 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/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/0/) — Animal myths are like a story passed along a line of children in a game of whispers: something true is seen, someone tells it a bit wrongly, and a cartoon or a film makes the wrong version famous. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/1/) — In Dumbo the grown-up elephants scream and climb onto a stool when a tiny mouse runs past, and in the old Lemmings computer game little creatures march off cliffs in a line. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/2/) — Both are fun, and both are wrong about real animals. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/3/) — Each myth usually hides something true: an ostrich lying flat with its neck on the ground looks headless from far away, and lemmings really do drown sometimes when huge crowds of them cross rivers. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/4/) — The way to put a myth right is the scientist's way: ask what the animal really does, test it fairly, and look at who first told the story and why. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/5/) — Elephants are not especially scared of mice; in tests they were startled by anything moving suddenly near their feet, and they are wary of bees, which can sting inside the trunk, so farmers in Africa build beehive fences to keep elephants off crops. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/6/) — Lemmings do not kill themselves; in years with very many lemmings they move to new places and some drown crossing water, and a 1958 Disney film faked its famous cliff scene by pushing lemmings over. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/7/) — Ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand; they lie flat with their necks along the ground to hide, and they turn their eggs in the nest with their beaks, so from far away the head seems buried. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/9/) — No bat is blind; fruit bats see well, and many small bats also find insects in the dark by listening to the echoes of their own calls, which is called echolocation. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/10/) — Most birds have a poor sense of smell and will not reject a chick that a person touched, but it is still best to leave wild babies alone. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/11/) — Porcupines cannot shoot their quills; the quills come off easily when touched and stick into the attacker, and a porcupine rattles its quills and stamps its feet as a warning first. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/12/) — Bulls cannot see red well; it is the movement of the matador's cape that makes them charge, and a waving towel of any colour would do the same. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/13/) — In Britain the crane fly is called daddy long legs; it is not a spider and has no venom, and the cellar spiders also called daddy long legs have weak venom that is harmless to people. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/14/) — A duck's quack does echo; scientists tested it in a special sound room, and the echo is just hard to hear because the quack fades away softly. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/15/) — Chameleons change colour mostly to show their mood, to signal to other chameleons and to warm up or cool down; on a chessboard a chameleon would not turn checked. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/295-animal-myths-put-right-elephants-and-mice-lemmings-ostriches-and-goldfish/16/) — Hedgehogs eat beetles, worms and slugs, not apples; old pictures showed them carrying fruit on their spines, and milk makes hedgehogs ill, while cat food and water are safe for them. - ← previous: [Cats through history: Egypt's sacred cats, ship cats and Tom and Jerry](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/294-cats-through-history-egypt-s-sacred-cats-ship-cats-and-tom-and-jerry/) - next →: [Animals in the news: true stories, fakes and how to read them](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/296-animals-in-the-news-true-stories-fakes-and-how-to-read-them/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)