--- title: Rodents of every kind: squirrels, marmots, prairie dogs, porcupines, chinchillas and dormice — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Rodents of every kind: squirrels, marmots, prairie dogs, porcupines, chinchillas and dormice», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Rodents have spread into almost every way of life: some glide between trees a --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/) [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/) / Rodents of every kind: squirrels, marm… # Rodents of every kind: squirrels, marmots, prairie dogs, porcupines, chinchillas and dormice Lesson 317 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 19 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/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/0/) — Rodents have spread into almost every way of life: some glide between trees at night, some live in huge towns underground, some wear armour of quills, and some sleep away half the year. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/1/) — The squirrel family alone holds tree squirrels, flying squirrels, chipmunks, marmots and prairie dogs, which are really ground squirrels that bark. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/2/) — Porcupines carry thousands of barbed quills, chinchillas wear one of the thickest furs on Earth, and the tiny hazel dormouse curls into a tight golden ball to sleep through winter. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/3/) — Watch a grey squirrel in a park in autumn: it buries a nut, looks round, and sometimes digs a fake hole somewhere else. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/4/) — Every nut it forgets may grow into a tree. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/5/) — Grey squirrels bury thousands of nuts in autumn, each in a different place, and find many by memory and smell; the nuts they forget can grow into trees. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/6/) — Squirrels have been reported to pretend to bury a nut when another animal is watching. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/7/) — Flying squirrels glide from tree to tree on a flap of skin between their front and back legs, so they need not climb down where predators wait; in 2019 scientists found their fur glows pink under ultraviolet light, and nobody knows why. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/8/) — Alpine marmots are big ground squirrels that whistle to warn each other of eagles and foxes and hibernate for about six months in family groups; the American groundhog is a marmot too. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/9/) — On Groundhog Day in America people pretend a groundhog predicts when spring will come, but no animal can really forecast the weather weeks ahead. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/10/) — Prairie dogs are ground squirrels living in huge underground towns with many entrances and rooms; in about 1900 one town in Texas was reported to hold hundreds of millions of them. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/11/) — The scientist Con Slobodchikoff reported that prairie dog alarm calls change for hawks, coyotes, dogs and people, and even with the colour of a person's shirt; how much the calls really describe is still argued. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/12/) — A North American porcupine has about 30,000 quills, stiff hairs with tiny barbs that work their way into skin; porcupines cannot shoot their quills. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/13/) — African crested porcupines rattle hollow tail quills as a warning before they ever charge; they live on the ground, while American porcupines climb trees and some have gripping tails. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/14/) — The American and the African and Asian porcupines are only distant relatives, and many scientists think they grew quills separately. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/15/) — Chinchillas of the high Andes have one of the thickest furs of any land animal, with dozens of hairs from each tiny hole in the skin, and they bathe in dust because wet fur dries too slowly. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/16/) — Millions of chinchillas were hunted for fur coats in the 1800s and 1900s; both wild kinds are now endangered, and most pet chinchillas come from a few taken to the USA in the 1920s. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/17/) — The hazel dormouse gets very fat in autumn on hazelnuts and berries and sleeps through winter for up to about six months; hazel dormice in Britain have fallen by about half since 2000, reported. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/317-rodents-of-every-kind-squirrels-marmots-prairie-dogs-porcupines-chinchillas-and-dormice/18/) — A dormouse leaves a smooth round hole with tooth marks around the edge in a hazelnut; volunteers hunt for nibbled nuts to find where rare dormice live. - ← previous: [Rodents: the biggest group of mammals and their ever-growing teeth](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/316-rodents-the-biggest-group-of-mammals-and-their-ever-growing-teeth/) - next →: [Deer: antlers that fall off and grow again; red deer, roe deer, moose, muntjac and water deer](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/318-deer-antlers-that-fall-off-and-grow-again-red-deer-roe-deer-moose-muntjac-and-water-deer/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)