--- title: The axolotl, the tardigrade and the mantis shrimp — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The axolotl, the tardigrade and the mantis shrimp», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Three small animals with superpowers that are real but often told wrong: the axolotl regrows lost legs, the tardigrade s --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/) [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 axolotl, the tardigrade and the ma… # The axolotl, the tardigrade and the mantis shrimp Lesson 44 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 15 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/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/0/) — Three small animals with superpowers that are real but often told wrong: the axolotl regrows lost legs, the tardigrade survives drying out for years, and the mantis shrimp punches harder than almost anything its size. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/1/) — The axolotl is a salamander that never grows up: it keeps its baby gills, the feathery frills on its head, and stays in water all its life, smiling a smile that is only the shape of its mouth. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/2/) — Squeeze a clump of wet moss from a wall into a dish and under a microscope you may see water bears, tiny eight-legged tardigrades plodding about like chubby bears in slow motion. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/3/) — Games and memes call tardigrades indestructible and say mantis shrimps see a rainbow we cannot imagine; the truth is cleverer, because the tardigrade survives by shutting down and the mantis shrimp sees colours fast rather than finely. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/4/) — The frills on an axolotl's head are gills: it is a salamander that keeps its young features, gills and a tail fin, for its whole life and stays in water, which scientists call neoteny. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/5/) — An axolotl can regrow a whole lost leg with bones, muscles and nerves, and parts of its tail, spinal cord, heart and brain, without leaving a scar; doctors study it in the hope of helping people heal better one day. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/6/) — An axolotl hunts by suddenly opening its wide mouth and sucking in worms, insect larvae and small fish; its smile is just the shape of its mouth, even when it is ill. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/7/) — Wild axolotls live only in the canals of Lake Xochimilco in Mexico City, are mostly dark brown or olive with speckles, and are critically endangered because of drained, polluted water and introduced fish. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/8/) — Tardigrades, or water bears, are about half a millimetre long, have 8 stumpy legs ending in claws that grip moss and grains of soil so they are not washed away, and live in moss, soil, ponds and the sea; over 1,000 kinds are known. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/9/) — When its home dries out, a tardigrade pulls in its legs and head and shrivels into a tun, which can survive for years and come back to life when wetted. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/10/) — As tuns, tardigrades have survived extreme cold, huge doses of radiation and, in 2007, 10 days outside a spacecraft in space. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/11/) — It is a myth that tardigrades are indestructible: active wet ones die from heat or from drying too fast, and in 2019 the ones on a crashed Moon lander probably did not survive the impact. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/12/) — The peacock mantis shrimp strikes with club-shaped limbs at about 80 km/h, using a spring-and-catch: muscles slowly load the spring, then the catch lets all that energy go at once, fast enough to smash snail shells and to crack aquarium glass in big ones. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/13/) — Mantis shrimps have 12 to 16 kinds of light sensors while we have 3 kinds of colour sensors, yet a 2014 study found they are worse than us at telling close colours apart. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/44-axolotl-tardigrade-mantis-shrimp/14/) — Some mantis shrimps are smashers with clubs for hard shells, and others are spearers that stab soft fish from their burrows in the sand. - ← previous: [The platypus and the echidna: mammals that lay eggs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/43-platypus-and-echidna/) - next →: [More record-breakers and oddballs: sloth, narwhal, chameleon, electric eel, giraffe](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/45-sloth-narwhal-chameleon-eel-giraffe/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)