--- title: The rainforest from below: understorey and forest floor — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The rainforest from below: understorey and forest floor», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Under the canopy lies the understorey, a dim world of young trees, shrubs, vines and big-leaved plants, and below --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/) [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/) / The rainforest from below: understorey… # The rainforest from below: understorey and forest floor Lesson 3 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 18 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/3-the-rainforest-from-below/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/0/) — Under the canopy lies the understorey, a dim world of young trees, shrubs, vines and big-leaved plants, and below that the forest floor, where only about 2 per cent of the sunlight arrives. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/1/) — It is so dark at midday that a camera needs a torch, and because so little light gets through, the floor is often surprisingly easy to walk across, except where a giant tree has fallen and let the sun in. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/2/) — The floor is the forest's kitchen and recycling bin: fungi, bacteria, termites and worms turn a fallen leaf into food for the trees again in just weeks, so the soil itself stays thin and poor. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/4/) — In cartoons a centipede always has exactly 100 legs and wears 100 shoes; a real centipede never has exactly 100 legs, because it always has an odd number of pairs, such as 15, 21 or 23 pairs. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/5/) — Only about 2 per cent of sunlight reaches the floor of a thick rainforest, so few plants grow there except where a big tree has fallen. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/6/) — Jaguars rest in trees, swim well and hunt capybaras, caimans, turtles and fish; they are the only big cats in the Americas and have the strongest bite for their size of any big cat. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/7/) — Leafcutter ants do not eat the leaves they carry; they chew them into a mulch to grow a fungus garden, and the fungus feeds a colony that can hold several million ants. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/8/) — Poison dart frogs warn predators with bright colours, and their poison comes mainly from the ants and mites they eat, so zoo-raised frogs fed on fruit flies are not poisonous. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/9/) — Rainforest soil is thin, so roots stay near the surface, and many tall trees grow wide buttress roots that prop them up like the walls of a tent. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/10/) — Tapirs are shy plant-eaters with a short flexible snout that grabs leaves and can work as a snorkel; their closest relatives are horses and rhinos, not pigs. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/11/) — The Malayan leaf frog is brown and flat with pointed folds above its eyes, so on a floor of dead leaves it looks just like one of them. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/12/) — On the warm, wet floor fungi, bacteria, termites and worms break dead leaves down in weeks, and the trees take the nutrients straight back, which is why cleared rainforest land often becomes poor within a few years of farming. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/13/) — The okapi of the Congo rainforest is the giraffe's closest living relative, has zebra-like stripes on its legs and a long tongue that can reach its own ears. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/14/) — Giant tropical centipedes hunt insects, spiders and even small frogs and mice at night; their first pair of legs are hollow venom fangs, so they must never be handled. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/15/) — Centipedes always have an odd number of pairs of legs, so no centipede has exactly 100 legs. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/16/) — The southern cassowary of northern Australia and New Guinea is a huge flightless bird with a casque on its head and a dagger-like inner claw about 10 cm long; it can be dangerous to people who get close. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/17/) — Cassowaries swallow fruit whole and spread the seeds of over 200 kinds of plants in their droppings. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/3-the-rainforest-from-below/18/) — Giant African land snails can grow shells about 20 cm long and are a serious pest outside Africa, so keeping or releasing them is banned in places like the USA. - ← previous: [The rainforest from the top: emergent layer and canopy](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/2-the-rainforest-from-the-top/) - next →: [The savanna: grass, trees and the great herds](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/4-the-savanna/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)