--- title: Ukraine's steppe: marmots, sousliks, great bustards and Askania-Nova — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Ukraine's steppe: marmots, sousliks, great bustards and Askania-Nova», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: On a grassy hill in eastern Ukraine a sharp whistle rings out, and a fat furry animal standing up lik --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/) [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/) / Ukraine's steppe: marmots, sousliks, g… # Ukraine's steppe: marmots, sousliks, great bustards and Askania-Nova Lesson 373 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 21 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/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/0/) — On a grassy hill in eastern Ukraine a sharp whistle rings out, and a fat furry animal standing up like a post dives underground. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/1/) — It is a steppe marmot, bobak, warning its family that an eagle is overhead. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/2/) — The steppe is flat grassland with no trees to hide behind, so its animals live by watching far, standing up tall and running into burrows. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/3/) — Little sousliks do the same, and eagles and polecats hunt them. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/4/) — Once the steppe covered much of southern Ukraine. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/5/) — Almost all of it was ploughed into fields full of wheat and sunflowers, and its animals had to survive in reserves and on old burial mounds called kurgans. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/6/) — In the Kherson region, Askania-Nova, set up in 1898, kept a big piece of steppe never ploughed and helped save wild animals such as Przewalski's horses. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/7/) — Since 2022 it has been under Russian occupation, and Ukrainian scientists report worries about its animals. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/8/) — The steppe marmot, bobak, stands on its back legs and whistles to warn its family of eagles and foxes. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/9/) — Marmot families live in big burrows with many entrances and sleep through winter for about half the year. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/10/) — Before winter marmots get very fat; then their heart slows to a few beats a minute, the body cools, the family sleeps together for warmth and they plug the burrow with grass and earth. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/11/) — Marmots almost vanished when most steppe was ploughed and came back in reserves in the Luhansk and Kharkiv regions. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/12/) — Sousliks are ground squirrels of the steppe that eat seeds, roots and insects and stand up to watch for eagles, polecats and foxes; the speckled souslik has white dots and is now rare. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/13/) — Sousliks are a main food for steppe eagles, imperial eagles and steppe polecats, so when souslik colonies disappear these hunters disappear too. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/14/) — The great bustard is one of the heaviest birds that can fly; big males weigh about 16 kilograms, and it is in Ukraine's Red Book. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/15/) — A great bustard has three toes on each foot and no back toe, because it walks on open ground and never perches. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/16/) — In spring a male great bustard turns his feathers inside out to look like a white fluffy ball, puffs up his throat and fans his tail, and females watch many males before choosing. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/17/) — Askania-Nova in the Kherson region was set up in 1898 by Friedrich Falz-Fein as a nature reserve and zoo with animals from many continents, zebras and antelopes too, and it protects one of the biggest pieces of unploughed steppe. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/18/) — Przewalski's horses are wild horses from Mongolia that died out in the wild and survived in zoos; Askania-Nova helped breed them, and some were later let go in the Chornobyl zone. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/19/) — Przewalski's horses are short and stocky, sandy brown, with a stiff mane that stands up like a brush. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/373-ukraine-s-steppe-marmots-sousliks-great-bustards-and-askania-nova/20/) — Only a tiny part of real steppe is left, mostly in reserves and on old burial mounds called kurgans, where old steppe flowers and insects survive like on an island. - ← previous: [Ukraine's forests: bison, elk, lynx, wolves and Carpathian brown bears](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/372-ukraine-s-forests-bison-elk-lynx-wolves-and-carpathian-brown-bears/) - next →: [Ukraine's waters: Danube delta pelicans, Black Sea dolphins, sturgeon and gobies](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/374-ukraine-s-waters-danube-delta-pelicans-black-sea-dolphins-sturgeon-and-gobies/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)