--- title: Odd-looking animals: shoebills, star-nosed moles, saigas, pangolins and hagfish — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Odd-looking animals: shoebills, star-nosed moles, saigas, pangolins and hagfish», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Some animals look as if a child drew them for a joke: a bird with a shoe for a beak, a mol --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/) [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/) / Odd-looking animals: shoebills, star-n… # Odd-looking animals: shoebills, star-nosed moles, saigas, pangolins and hagfish Lesson 366 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/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/0/) — Some animals look as if a child drew them for a joke: a bird with a shoe for a beak, a mole with a pink star on its nose, an antelope with a little trunk, a walking pine cone and a fish that turns into slime. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/1/) — But every odd part is a tool: the star feels for worms in the dark, the big nose warms freezing air, the scales are armour and the slime chokes a shark's gills. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/2/) — Think of a toolbox: a strange-looking tool is strange because it does one job very well, and these animals are the same. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/3/) — Looks can also fool us: the shoebill looks like a stork and a pangolin looks like a reptile, but scientists check relatives by genes and bodies, not by looks. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/4/) — The shoebill lives in swamps of eastern and central Africa, stands about as tall as a ten-year-old and waits almost without moving before it lunges to grab fish such as lungfish. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/5/) — Shoebills greet each other by clattering their huge beaks, and scientists now think their closest relatives are pelicans and hammerkops, not true storks. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/6/) — Only a few thousand shoebills are left in the wild because swamps are drained and eggs are taken, and despite their scary stare they are shy birds. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/7/) — The star-nosed mole's star has 22 fleshy rays, 11 on each side, with about 25,000 tiny touch sensors, and it can find and eat a tiny meal in about a quarter of a second. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/8/) — The star-nosed mole swims in North American wetlands and smells underwater by blowing little bubbles onto things and sniffing them back in. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/12/) — There are eight kinds of pangolin, four in Asia and four in Africa. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/13/) — A pangolin has no teeth; it licks up ants and termites with a very long sticky tongue anchored deep in its body near the hips, and small stones in its stomach help grind them. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/14/) — Pangolins are among the most smuggled mammals, killed for scales that are only keratin and cure nothing. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/15/) — The hagfish is an eel-shaped fish with no jaws; when grabbed it lets out slime that becomes a bucketful of goo in seconds and clogs an attacker's gills, and it ties itself in a knot to wipe the slime off. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/16/) — A hagfish has one main heart and several helper hearts, often counted as four in all; it can live for months without eating and helps clean the sea floor by eating dead whales and fish. - ← previous: [Tiny champions: the strongest beetle, the highest-jumping flea and the leggiest millipede](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/365-tiny-champions-the-strongest-beetle-the-highest-jumping-flea-and-the-leggiest-millipede/) - next →: [Animal colours: pink flamingos, rare blue animals, white albinos and black panthers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/367-animal-colours-pink-flamingos-rare-blue-animals-white-albinos-and-black-panthers/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)