Q 01/05

A rock barnacle spends its whole adult life glued upside down to the shore by which part of its body?

A) Its forehead

B) Its tail tip

C) Its underside

D) Its mouthparts

Answer · why

A) Its forehead

Its forehead is where the cement glands sit, at the base of the first pair of antennae. A larva picks the spot, glues itself down and never moves agai...

Q 02/05

A feeding barnacle combs food from the water with feathery cirri, which are modified versions of which body parts?

A) Antennae

B) Fins

C) Legs

D) Jaws

Answer · why

C) Legs

Legs are what a barnacle feeds with: six pairs of them, curled and fringed with hairs, sweep out through the top of the shell and rake food towards th...

Q 03/05

For its body size, a barnacle has the longest what of any known animal?

A) Tongue

B) Penis

C) Antenna

D) Intestine

Answer · why

B) Penis

Penis length in barnacles can reach eight times the body length, the largest ratio of any known animal. It stretches out to fertilise neighbours cemen...

Q 04/05

Which Victorian naturalist spent eight years dissecting barnacles and then declared he hated them as no man ever had?

A) Thomas Henry Huxley

B) Alfred Russel Wallace

C) Richard Owen

D) Charles Darwin

Answer · why

D) Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin's barnacle monographs won him the Royal Society's Royal Medal in 1853. He worked on them at home so intently that his young son assumed...

Q 05/05

Barnacles were classed as molluscs until their swimming larvae revealed that they belong to which animal group?

A) Echinoderms

B) Cnidarians

C) Crustaceans

D) Annelids

Answer · why

C) Crustaceans

Crustaceans is the right group, which makes barnacles cousins of shrimp and lobsters. John Vaughan Thompson showed it in 1830 by watching the free-swi...