--- title: The real animals of Wonderland: the dodo, the dormouse, the March hare, flamingos and hedgehogs — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The real animals of Wonderland: the dodo, the dormouse, the March hare, flamingos and hedgehogs», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» is full of animals that talk, argue and --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/) [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 real animals of Wonderland: the do… # The real animals of Wonderland: the dodo, the dormouse, the March hare, flamingos and hedgehogs Lesson 401 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 17 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/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/0/) — «Alice's Adventures in Wonderland» is full of animals that talk, argue and play croquet, but most of them are real animals with real habits, and Lewis Carroll often chose them because of those habits or of old sayings about them. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/1/) — The Dodo who runs the Caucus-race was a real bird, a big flightless pigeon from the island of Mauritius, and it died out long before Alice was written: no one alive has seen a dodo. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/2/) — The Dormouse who keeps falling asleep at the tea-party is sleepy for a true reason: dormice really sleep through the whole winter, and in summer they sleep all day and wake at night. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/3/) — The March Hare is mad because of an old saying, «mad as a March hare»: in spring, hares chase each other and stand up and «box» in the fields. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/4/) — And the flamingos and hedgehogs used as croquet mallets and balls are real too, though no real bird or hedgehog would put up with that. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/6/) — The dodo was a large bird that could not fly, related to pigeons and doves, and it lived only on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/7/) — The dodo had no enemies on its island, so it was not afraid of people; sailors, and the rats, pigs and cats they brought, wiped it out, and the last dodos are thought to have died around 1680. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/10/) — The hazel dormouse is a small, gold-brown rodent with a fluffy tail that lives in woods and hedges in Britain and Europe; it is now rare in Britain. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/11/) — A hazel dormouse hibernates from about October to April, curled in a nest on the ground, and in summer it sleeps by day and is busy at night, so at an afternoon tea it would be fast asleep. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/12/) — Hares are not rodents; they are bigger than rabbits, with longer ears and legs, they live above ground instead of in burrows, and their babies are born with fur and open eyes. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/13/) — In spring hares chase each other and stand up on their back legs to «box»; this is usually a female hitting a male who is bothering her, not two males fighting. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/14/) — Flamingos are tall pink wading birds that feed with their heads upside down in shallow water, sieving tiny shrimps and algae with their beaks; their pink comes from that food. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/15/) — A real flamingo's long neck is soft and bends, which is exactly why Alice's flamingo keeps twisting round to look at her: it would be a useless croquet mallet. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/16/) — A hedgehog has about 5,000 to 7,000 spines and rolls into a tight prickly ball when frightened, which is why Carroll made hedgehogs into croquet balls that unroll and walk away. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/17/) — Hedgehogs eat beetles, worms and slugs; milk upsets their stomachs, so the right drink to leave out for one is a dish of water. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/18/) — Alice is called a «serpent» by the Pigeon because of her long neck; real pigeons eat seeds and grain, not eggs, but snakes do eat birds' eggs, so the Pigeon's fear is real for birds. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/19/) — Cats cannot grin, vanish or talk; «to grin like a Cheshire cat» was an old saying before Carroll, and nobody is quite sure where it came from. - ← previous: [The big biology quiz, part 4: everything from lessons 301 to 399](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/400-the-big-biology-quiz-part-4-everything-from-lessons-301-to-399/) - next →: [Wonderland's sea creatures and made-up ones: lobsters, whiting, turtles, the Mock Turtle, the Gryphon and the Caterpillar](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)