Q 01/05

The body's sneeze reflex is switched off while a person is doing which of these?

A) Sleeping

B) Laughing

C) Swimming

D) Singing

Answer · why

A) Sleeping

Sleeping in the REM stage brings on atonia, which leaves motor neurons unstimulated so reflex signals are never relayed, though a strong enough irrita...

Q 02/05

Which Galápagos reptile clears excess salt from its body by sneezing it out through its nostrils?

A) Giant tortoise

B) Lava lizard

C) Marine iguana

D) Green turtle

Answer · why

C) Marine iguana

Marine iguana salt glands filter the blood and expel the brine at the nostrils in a sneeze-like burst, and the skull has an unusually large nasal cavi...

Q 03/05

Which African predators hold a kind of vote by sneezing to decide whether the group sets off to hunt?

A) Lions

B) Hyenas

C) Mongooses

D) Wild dogs

Answer · why

D) Wild dogs

Wild dogs rally before a hunt, and the more of them that sneeze, the likelier the pack is to leave; when a dominant animal starts it, around three sne...

Q 04/05

The longest sneezing fit on record, which struck Britain's Donna Griffiths in 1981, lasted nearly how long?

A) Three days

B) Three weeks

C) Three months

D) Three years

Answer · why

D) Three years

Three years, near enough: it was two years and eight months before her first sneeze-free day, which Guinness counts as day 977, and she sneezed an est...

Q 05/05

Fred Ott's Sneeze, one of the oldest surviving copyrighted films, was made in 1894 by which American inventor's company?

A) George Eastman

B) Thomas Edison

C) Alexander Graham Bell

D) Nikola Tesla

Answer · why

B) Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison's studio filmed his employee Fred Ott sneezing in a clip about five seconds long, and in 2015 the Library of Congress added it to the Na...