--- title: Antarctica: penguins, seals and the coldest place on Earth — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Antarctica: penguins, seals and the coldest place on Earth», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Antarctica is a continent at the bottom of the world, buried under ice more than 4 km thick in places, so high, --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/) [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/) / Antarctica: penguins, seals and the co… # Antarctica: penguins, seals and the coldest place on Earth Lesson 7 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 19 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/7-antarctica/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/0/) — Antarctica is a continent at the bottom of the world, buried under ice more than 4 km thick in places, so high, dry and dark in winter that it holds the record for the coldest temperature ever measured. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/1/) — Almost all its life is in and around the sea: the Southern Ocean swarms with krill, tiny shrimp-like animals that feed whales, seals, penguins, fish and seabirds, so krill are the bottom of almost every Antarctic menu. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/2/) — The animals beat the cold by teamwork and clever bodies: emperor penguins huddle in a blizzard and take turns in the warm middle, icefish carry natural antifreeze, and seals keep breathing holes open in the ice. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/3/) — Christmas cards love polar bears and penguins playing together, but they never meet: polar bears live in the Arctic in the north, penguins almost only in the south, and the warm tropical oceans lie between them. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/4/) — In Happy Feet the emperor penguins find their partners by singing, and that part is truer than it looks: real emperor penguins recognise their mate and their chick by voice in a crowd of thousands. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/5/) — Male emperor penguins huddle through the Antarctic winter in winds up to about 200 km per hour and temperatures below minus 40 degrees, each balancing one egg on his feet under a warm fold of belly skin for about two months without eating. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/6/) — Emperor penguins find their partners and chicks among thousands of others by recognising their calls. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/7/) — Penguins toboggan on their bellies because sliding is faster and uses less energy than waddling, and gentoo penguins are the fastest swimming penguins, at about 35 km per hour underwater. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/8/) — Polar bears live only in the Arctic and penguins almost only in the southern half of the world, so they never meet in the wild; the Galapagos penguin lives right at the equator, kept cool by cold currents. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/9/) — The leopard seal, about 3.5 metres long, eats krill, fish, penguins and other seals, and its back teeth lock together like a sieve to strain krill. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/10/) — Antarctic krill are shrimp-like animals about 6 cm long, and all of them together may weigh hundreds of millions of tonnes, possibly more than all the humans on Earth. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/11/) — The blue whale, up to about 30 metres long, is the largest animal that has ever lived; it gulps krill and seawater and pushes the water out through comb-like baleen, eating around 4 tonnes of krill a day; its heart, the biggest of any animal, is reported to weigh about 180 kg. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/12/) — The coldest temperature ever measured at a weather station was about minus 89 degrees Celsius, at Vostok Station in Antarctica in 1983. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/13/) — The Antarctic ice sheet is over 4 km thick in places and holds about 70 per cent of the world's fresh water. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/14/) — Weddell seals live farther south than any other mammal, can hold their breath for over an hour and keep breathing holes open by scraping the ice with their teeth. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/15/) — Antarctic icefish are the only animals with backbones that have no red blood cells, so their blood is almost clear; very cold water holds plenty of oxygen, and many Antarctic fish have antifreeze in their blood. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/16/) — The wandering albatross has the longest wingspan of any living bird, up to about 3.5 metres, and glides for hours on the winds of the Southern Ocean. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/17/) — Scott's and Shackleton's huts still stand after over 100 years because cold and dryness stop rotting, and no people live in Antarctica permanently, only scientists and support staff. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/7-antarctica/18/) — Adelie penguins build nests of stones that lift the eggs above meltwater, and because good stones are hard to find they steal them from their neighbours; penguins can drink seawater because a gland above the eye removes extra salt. - ← previous: [The Arctic: ice, snow and the polar bear's world](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/6-the-arctic/) - next →: [The ocean: open sea, sunlit zone and the deep dark](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/8-the-ocean/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)