--- title: The big cats house: lions and tigers up close — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The big cats house: lions and tigers up close», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: In the big cats house a lion may lie on a warm rock for your whole visit, and that is not laziness: a lion hunts in short, h --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/) [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 big cats house: lions and tigers u… # The big cats house: lions and tigers up close Lesson 81 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 16 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/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/0/) — In the big cats house a lion may lie on a warm rock for your whole visit, and that is not laziness: a lion hunts in short, hard bursts, so it saves its strength by resting up to 20 hours a day. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/1/) — Then it gets up, roars, and the glass seems to shake; a roar can carry about 8 kilometres on a still night and tells other lions «this land is ours». - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/2/) — Next door a tiger slides into its pool, because tigers come from hot, steamy forests and love water, and under its fur the skin itself is striped. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/3/) — Watch the lion lick its paw and you will see your own cat at home: same rough tongue, same washing, just two hundred times heavier. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/4/) — A big cat does not chase mice like Tom chases Jerry; a mouse is far too small to be worth the effort for a hunter that needs kilograms of meat a day. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/5/) — Lions sleep or rest for up to 20 hours a day, in the zoo and in the wild, and a house cat sleeps about 15. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/6/) — A lion's roar can be heard up to about 8 kilometres away; only the lion, tiger, leopard and jaguar can truly roar. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/7/) — In a wild pride the lionesses do most of the hunting, often together, while the maned male guards the land and the cubs. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/8/) — Tigers swim well and cool off in pools and rivers; most cats dislike water, but tigers, jaguars and fishing cats are happy swimmers. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/9/) — Walking the same line again and again is called pacing; it can mean a cat is bored, and good zoos change the enclosure and give puzzles to reduce it. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/10/) — A tiger's skin is striped under the fur, and no two tigers have the same stripes, so scientists tell them apart from camera photos. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/11/) — Deer see fewer colours than we do, so to them an orange tiger looks much like the green and brown leaves around it. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/12/) — White tigers are ordinary Bengal tigers with a rare gene; breeding close relatives to get them causes health problems, so good zoos no longer do it. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/13/) — Big cats are kept behind strong mesh, thick glass or a wide ditch called a moat, and keepers never go in with them. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/14/) — A lion's tongue is covered with tiny backward hooks that comb its fur and scrape meat off bones, like a house cat's but far rougher. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/81-big-cats-house-lions-and-tigers/15/) — A lion needs about 5 to 7 kilograms of meat a day, which would be hundreds of mice, so big cats hunt zebras, antelopes and other large animals. - ← previous: [Animals of North America and Britain: moose, bald eagles, raccoons, beavers, foxes, badgers, hedgehogs, robins](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/80-animals-of-north-america-and-britain/) - next →: [The big cats house: snow leopards, jaguars, small cats and enrichment](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/82-big-cats-house-snow-leopards-jaguars-small-cats/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)