Q 01/05

What kind of animal carried home the dead black-footed ferret that proved in 1981 the ferrets had survived?

A) A barn cat

B) A ranch dog

C) A golden eagle

D) A coyote

Answer · why

B) A ranch dog

A ranch dog named Shep brought the carcass home to his owners in Wyoming. Biologists who then searched the area found a small colony nobody knew was t...

Q 02/05

Which US youth organization voted the black-footed ferret the mascot of its 2026 fundraising season?

A) Boy Scouts

B) Camp Fire

C) Girl Scouts

D) Junior Rangers

Answer · why

C) Girl Scouts

Girl Scouts picked the ferret as their 2026 cookie mascot in a vote that also offered the bison, the little brown bat and the mountain goat.

Q 03/05

Elizabeth Ann, born in December 2020, was the first black-footed ferret produced by which laboratory technique?

A) Gene editing

B) Cloning

C) Crossbreeding

D) Sperm sorting

Answer · why

B) Cloning

Cloning revived the genes of Willa, a ferret who died in the 1980s with no living descendants. Elizabeth Ann was carried by a domestic ferret so that ...

Q 04/05

A wildlife refuge near Denver that shelters black-footed ferrets was built in 1942 as a factory for what?

A) Fighter aircraft

B) Naval artillery

C) Army tanks

D) Chemical weapons

Answer · why

D) Chemical weapons

Chemical weapons were made, and later dismantled, at Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The cleaned-up land became a refuge where bison, prairie dogs and ferrets...

Q 05/05

Endangered prairie ferrets die from Yersinia pestis, the same bacterium that caused which pandemic of the 1300s?

A) The Spanish flu

B) The Black Death

C) The sweating sickness

D) The Antonine Plague

Answer · why

B) The Black Death

The Black Death swept across Europe and Asia in the 1300s. The same disease reached the prairie only in the 1900s, and it is almost always fatal to a ...