--- title: Wonderland's sea creatures and made-up ones: lobsters, whiting, turtles, the Mock Turtle, the Gryphon and the Caterpillar — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Wonderland's sea creatures and made-up ones: lobsters, whiting, turtles, the Mock Turtle, the Gryphon and the Caterpillar», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Some of these are real sea animals with real hab --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/) [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/) / Wonderland's sea creatures and made-up… # Wonderland's sea creatures and made-up ones: lobsters, whiting, turtles, the Mock Turtle, the Gryphon and the Caterpillar Lesson 402 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/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/1/) — Some of these are real sea animals with real habits, some are real animals with a joke stuck on them, and two are not animals at all: the Gryphon comes from old legends and the Mock Turtle comes from a soup. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/2/) — Mock turtle soup was a real Victorian dish: people who could not afford soup made from real sea turtles made a pretend one from a calf's head. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/4/) — Earlier, Alice nibbles a mushroom to grow and shrink and talks with a hookah-smoking Caterpillar. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/5/) — Real caterpillars do change, but in a different way: they become butterflies or moths. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/7/) — Lobsters live on the sea floor, walk on thin legs and have ten legs in all, counting the two big claws; they cannot live long out of water, so a dance on the beach is impossible. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/8/) — A live lobster is usually dark greenish brown or bluish; it turns red only when it is cooked, which is why the lobster in Alice's poem says «You have baked me too brown». - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/9/) — A whiting is a real silvery fish of the cod family from the North Sea; Victorian cooks served it fried with its tail fixed in its mouth, and that is where the Mock Turtle's «tails in their mouths» joke comes from: live whiting swim like any other fish. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/10/) — A porpoise is a small sea mammal related to dolphins, with a blunt nose; it breathes air through a blowhole and comes up to the surface to breathe. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/11/) — Turtles live mostly in water and have flippers or webbed feet; tortoises live on land and have heavy, stumpy legs; the Mock Turtle's teacher is called Tortoise only for the pun «because he taught us». - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/12/) — Sea turtles really do seem to cry: glands near their eyes push out the extra salt from the seawater they swallow, so salty «tears» run down their faces, but not from sadness. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/13/) — The Mock Turtle is not a real animal: «mock» means pretend, and mock turtle soup was made from a calf's head instead of turtle meat. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/14/) — A Gryphon, or griffin, is a creature of old legends with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion; it never existed, though some people think ancient fossil skulls found in the desert may have helped the story along. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/15/) — A caterpillar is the young stage of a butterfly or moth; it eats leaves, grows and sheds its skin several times, then makes a chrysalis or cocoon and comes out with wings. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/16/) — Alice tells the Caterpillar that one day it will turn into a chrysalis and then a butterfly, which is true science hidden in a silly conversation. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/17/) — A mushroom is the part of a fungus that pokes above the ground to spread spores; most of the fungus is a web of thin threads under the soil. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/18/) — Some wild mushrooms, like the death cap, can kill even in small bites, and poisonous ones can look just like safe ones, so you never eat a wild mushroom unless an expert has checked it. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/402-wonderland-sea-creatures-and-made-up-ones-lobster-whiting-turtle-mock-turtle-gryphon/19/) — The conger eel, the Mock Turtle's drawing master, is a real long sea fish that hides in rocks and wrecks; the «old crab» who teaches Latin and Greek is a joke about grumpy old teachers. - ← previous: [The real animals of Wonderland: the dodo, the dormouse, the March hare, flamingos and hedgehogs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/401-the-real-animals-of-wonderland-dodo-dormouse-hare-flamingo-hedgehog/) - next →: [The real animals of the river bank: the water vole, the mole, the otter, the toad and the river birds](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/403-the-real-animals-of-the-river-bank-water-vole-mole-otter-toad-and-the-river-birds/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)