Q 01/05

Which wild cat is so inbred that unrelated animals can accept each other's skin grafts?

A) Snow leopard

B) Cheetah

C) Jaguar

D) Cougar

Answer · why

B) Cheetah

Cheetah numbers crashed about 12,000 years ago, and the survivors' descendants are so alike that a skin graft from a stranger heals like the animal's ...

Q 02/05

Which fruit's top export variety, Gros Michel, was ruined by a fungus and replaced by the Cavendish?

A) Pineapple

B) Mango

C) Banana

D) Papaya

Answer · why

C) Banana

Banana plants of one variety are clones raised from suckers, so near-identical Gros Michel plantations fell together in the 1950s. The Cavendish is cl...

Q 03/05

Which insects, whose front wings form hard cases, make up about one in four known animal species?

A) Flies

B) Termites

C) Crickets

D) Beetles

Answer · why

D) Beetles

Beetles number about 400,000 described species, and new ones are found so often that the true total may be as high as two million.

Q 04/05

Which country dug a vault into an Arctic mountain to store backup copies of the world's crop seeds?

A) Norway

B) Iceland

C) Canada

D) Finland

Answer · why

A) Norway

Norway paid for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which opened in 2008 some 130 metres inside a sandstone mountain on the island of Spitsbergen.

Q 05/05

Which habitats cover under 0.1% of the ocean yet house at least a quarter of all marine species?

A) Kelp forests

B) Coral reefs

C) Seagrass meadows

D) Mangrove swamps

Answer · why

B) Coral reefs

Coral reefs are built by colonies of tiny animals called polyps, and their crowded variety has earned them the nickname rainforests of the sea.