Q 01/05

Which body of water is the world's largest lake, though it is usually called a sea?

A) Caspian Sea

B) Black Sea

C) Aral Sea

D) Dead Sea

Answer · why

A) Caspian Sea

Caspian Sea: it has features of both, and a 2018 treaty among its five shoreline nations treats it as legally neither fully a sea nor a lake.

Q 02/05

Which US city lies along the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain?

A) Baton Rouge

B) New Orleans

C) Mobile

D) Memphis

Answer · why

B) New Orleans

New Orleans: in 2005 Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed the levees holding back the lake, leaving about 80% of the city underwater.

Q 03/05

Lake Baikal, often called the world's oldest lake, formed roughly how long ago?

A) 250,000 years ago

B) 2.5 million years ago

C) 25 million years ago

D) 250 million years ago

Answer · why

C) 25 million years ago

25 million years ago: that great age and isolation gave the lake one of the world's most unusual sets of freshwater animals, many found nowhere else.

Q 04/05

Lake Baikal in Siberia has its own species of which marine mammal, found nowhere else?

A) Dolphin

B) Walrus

C) Seal

D) Sea otter

Answer · why

C) Seal

Seal: when the lake freezes over, Baikal seals use their claws to cut breathing holes in the ice.

Q 05/05

Often called the highest navigable lake in the world, Titicaca sits on the border of which two countries?

A) Bolivia and Chile

B) Chile and Argentina

C) Ecuador and Peru

D) Peru and Bolivia

Answer · why

D) Peru and Bolivia

Peru and Bolivia: though Bolivia lost its coast to Chile in the War of the Pacific, its navy patrols the lake.