--- title: The insect house: ants, stick insects, tarantulas and scorpions — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The insect house: ants, stick insects, tarantulas and scorpions», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Above your head in the insect house a line of leafcutter ants carries green leaf pieces along a rope, and --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/) [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 insect house: ants, stick insects,… # The insect house: ants, stick insects, tarantulas and scorpions Lesson 97 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/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/0/) — Above your head in the insect house a line of leafcutter ants carries green leaf pieces along a rope, and they are not lunch: the ants are farmers taking food to their fungus garden. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/1/) — Every tank holds a different survival trick: a stick insect sways like a twig, a scorpion glows under ultraviolet light, a cockroach hisses and a mantis swivels its head to stare at you. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/2/) — Counting legs sorts them out: ants, beetles, mantises and cockroaches have six legs and are insects, while tarantulas and scorpions have eight and are relatives of spiders. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/3/) — Cartoons get the numbers wrong: the ants in A Bug's Life walk on two legs and wave two arms, but a real ant has six legs, all fixed to the middle of its body. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/4/) — Some of the smallest animals here are the rarest of all, and zoos breed them to save kinds that would otherwise disappear. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/5/) — Leafcutter ants do not eat the leaves; they chew them into mush to grow a fungus garden and eat the fungus, and ants were farming fungus for millions of years before people farmed. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/6/) — Tiny leafcutter workers ride on the leaf pieces to guard the carriers from flies, and a big nest can hold millions of ants with a queen that lives over ten years. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/7/) — Stick insects look and sway like twigs to hide from birds that hunt by sight, and some can lay eggs that hatch without a male. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/8/) — Most tarantulas are not dangerous to people; their bite is like a bee sting, and some flick itchy hairs from their belly at predators; females can live 20 years or more. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/9/) — Scorpions glow blue-green under ultraviolet light because of a chemical in their outer shell; scientists are not sure why, and they find scorpions at night with UV torches. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/10/) — The honey bees that fly out to collect pollen and nectar are all female workers, and they do a waggle dance: its angle shows the direction of flowers compared with the sun and the length of the wiggle shows how far; Karl von Frisch won a Nobel Prize for this. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/12/) — A praying mantis can turn its head to follow moving prey before it strikes with spiky front legs, and tiny 3D glasses showed that mantises see depth. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/13/) — Dung beetles roll balls of dung to eat or lay eggs in, clearing and burying dung in farmers' fields, and some can steer at night by the Milky Way. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/14/) — The goliath and Hercules beetles are among the biggest insects; insects stay smallish partly because their breathing tubes work well only over short distances. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/15/) — Millions of years ago, when the air held more oxygen, some dragonfly relatives had wings about 70 centimetres across. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/16/) — Zoos breed rare small animals like Partula snails, nearly wiped out on their islands by one predator snail that people brought in, and the Lord Howe Island stick insect, which was thought extinct until a few were found on a sea rock in 2001. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/97-the-insect-house-ants-stick-insects-tarantulas-and-scorpions/17/) — Millipedes are not insects; most have fewer than 400 legs, two pairs on most body parts, and one found in Australia in 2021 had over 1,300 legs. - ← previous: [The petting farm: goats, sheep, pigs, rabbits and washing hands](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/96-the-petting-farm-goats-sheep-pigs-rabbits-and-washing-hands/) - next →: [The butterfly house](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/98-the-butterfly-house/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)