Q 01/05

What distinction does the whale shark hold?

A) Largest living animal

B) Largest living fish

C) Fastest shark

D) Longest-lived fish

Answer · why

B) Largest living fish

Largest living fish: only some whales are bigger, yet it lives on plankton, fish eggs and small schooling fish that it strains from the water.

Q 02/05

Which animals have been filmed hunting whale sharks in the Gulf of California, flipping them onto their backs?

A) Orcas

B) Sperm whales

C) Great white sharks

D) Humboldt squid

Answer · why

A) Orcas

Orcas, a male nicknamed Moctezuma among them at three of the four recorded hunts, ram young whale sharks over and bite at the belly until they bleed o...

Q 03/05

About how long was the largest whale shark ever reliably measured?

A) About 2 metres

B) About 6 metres

C) About 19 metres

D) About 60 metres

Answer · why

C) About 19 metres

About 19 metres: a shark caught by India's Arabian Sea fishery came to 18.8 m. Sharks of 20 m have been claimed, but a 2015 review of ocean giants jud...

Q 04/05

Despite its name, what kind of animal is the whale shark?

A) A marine mammal

B) A cartilaginous fish

C) A kind of manta ray

D) A bony fish

Answer · why

B) A cartilaginous fish

A cartilaginous fish: like every shark it has a skeleton of cartilage, not bone, and it breathes through gills, so unlike a whale it never has to come...

Q 05/05

The first whale shark known to science was harpooned in 1828 off which African port?

A) Cape Town

B) Mombasa

C) Zanzibar

D) Maputo

Answer · why

A) Cape Town

Cape Town: the shark was harpooned in Table Bay, and Andrew Smith, a British army surgeon who ran the town's new museum, wrote the first scientific de...