Q 01/05

Saudi Arabia, mostly Arabian Desert, is the largest country in the world without a single permanent what?

A) Forest

B) River

C) Volcano

D) Railway

Answer · why

B) River

No permanent river flows anywhere in Saudi Arabia, so the country leans on groundwater and desalinated seawater. Its valleys are wadis, which run only...

Q 02/05

What does the single hump of the Arabian camel, or dromedary, actually store to carry it through lean weeks?

A) Water

B) Protein

C) Fat

D) Bone marrow

Answer · why

C) Fat

Fat, up to 36 kg of it, fills the hump, and the camel burns it for energy when food runs short. A shrunken hump is a sign of a starving animal.

Q 03/05

Which mythical beast may have begun with sightings of the oryx, a white antelope of the Arabian Desert?

A) Griffin

B) Centaur

C) Pegasus

D) Unicorn

Answer · why

D) Unicorn

Unicorn legends may have begun with oryxes that had lost one of their long, straight horns. Aristotle and Pliny the Elder both listed the oryx among o...

Q 04/05

In camel racing across the Gulf states, what has replaced the child jockeys who once rode the racing camels?

A) Adult riders

B) Robots

C) Drones

D) Weighted saddles

Answer · why

B) Robots

Robots with remote-controlled whips now sit on the camels' backs. Qatar banned child jockeys in 2005 and ordered every race to be run with the machine...

Q 05/05

Rub' al Khali, the Arabic name of the world's largest continuous sand desert, translates into English as what?

A) Sea of Thirst

B) Red Wilderness

C) Empty Quarter

D) Land of No Return

Answer · why

C) Empty Quarter

Empty Quarter is the literal meaning, and the desert earns it: 650,000 square kilometres of dunes up to 250 metres high, filling the southern third of...