All Creatures Great and Small Quiz for Experts | Animals

Answer: Golden dart frog

Golden dart frogs (also called golden poison frogs, or just golden frogs) have skin that is coated in alkaloid poison. The average frog has about one milligram of the poison. This small amount is enough to kill around 10-20 people, and thousands of smaller creatures such as mice.

This frog is thought to perhaps be the most poisonous creature in the world. Almost any predator that tries to eat the frog is killed. The behaviour of golden dart frogs reflects that they are aware that they are not a very vulnerable species due to their poison; they do not attempt to camouflage themselves and do not appear to be very wary of predators.

Answer: Teeth

The Odontoceti order comprises toothed whales, including sperm whales, beluga whales, pilot whales, beaked whaled, killer whales and also dolphins (which technically killer whales are). Whales of the Mysticeti order (including blue whales and humpback whales, among a few others) are baleen whales, and they have baleen plates instead of teeth. Baleen looks like bristles or like a large coarse moustache, inside the whale's mouth.

The whale takes in a mouthful of water and then pushes the water back out through the baleen, filtering out water but leaving fish and krill inside the mouth, to then be swallowed whole. Baleen has been called whalebone, and whales have been hunted for their baleen.

Answer: 'Wash' or douse it in water

'Lotor' means 'washer'. Wild raccoons often forage for food along shorelines, including food that is underwater. When they get hold of something, they rub it between their paws and examine it, which can look like they are washing their food. Captive raccoons also often carry their food to a water source to douse it before eating.

It was once thought that this was done to moisten the food so that it could be more easily eaten, but is now believed to simply be an ingrained behaviour.

Answer: Rothschild giraffe

The Giraffe Centre was established by Jock and Betty Leslie-Melville at their own home in Langata. Their aim was to create a breeding program for the Rothschild giraffe because there were so few left in the wild. There are less than 1,000 Rothschild giraffes in the wild, mainly in Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya and Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda. Including at the Giraffe Centre, there were also 450 registered giraffes (in 2011) in captivity around the world. The Giraffe Centre's mandate has been pretty successful; breeding pairs from the centre have been successfully introduced into the wild to reproduce and bring the numbers up. The Giraffe Centre was opened to the public as a tourist destination in the 1980s; visitors can interact with and feed the giraffes.

The Rothschild giraffe, named for Walter Rothschild, is distinguishable from other subspecies by the colour of its coat, the absence of markings on its lower legs and the five ossicones (the horn-like things) on its head. No other subspecies has five.

Answer: A castrated rooster

A capon is a rooster whose testes have been completely removed, usually through surgery but caponization has also been done with estrogen implants. This is done for the purpose of raising the capon for its meat. The meat from an uncastrated rooster tends to be gamey, tough and stringy; the meat of a capon is more moist, tender and flavourful.

In some places in the world, meat birds sold as 'capons' are really just large chickens.

Answer: Bengal tiger

The gorilla is the most well-known for its knuckle-walking (walking on all fours, but instead of the front hands flat on the ground, the fingers are curled in and the knuckles touch the ground). This allows gorillas to carry small objects while walking on all fours, and preserves their fingers for tree climbing. A gorilla can walk bipedally as well, for short periods, particularly when carrying food or larger objects and when engaged in a conflict with another gorilla or another animal.

The platypus also knuckle-walks while on land, in order to protect the webbing between its toes/fingers. The giant anteater does as well, to keep its claws out of the way while walking.

Answer: It has no blubber but has very thick fur.

The sea otter, not to be confused with the much rarer marine otter native to South America, is kept warm by its very thick fur, the densest fur of any animal in the world (around 150,000 strands of hair per square centimetre). The long guard hairs are waterproof and keep the underfur dry, so that cold water does not touch the skin. Most other marine mammals, such as whales and dolphins, have blubber, a thick fatty layer of tissue that helps them retain heat.

Answer: Milkweed butterflies

Milkweed butterfly larvae eat only milkweed. In doing so, they come to retain poisonous glycosides from the milkweed, so that they taste unpleasant to predators. Most predators learn not to attempt to eat milkweed butterflies after tasting them. Adult butterflies in this subfamily will also eat milkweed, but will also feed from the nectar of a variety of other plants and liquids from fruits.

Answer: It acts as sunscreen.

The secretion is not actually blood, nor is it sweat. It is two differently pigmented acids, red hippsudoric acid and orange norhipposudoric acid (the colours are why it is sometimes referred to as "blood sweat"). When secreted from the skin, it's at first not coloured at all, but the red-orange colours appear in minutes and afterwards turn brown.

In addition to creating a sunscreen effect for the hippo, these secretions also prohibit the growth of bacteria on its skin. Despite its 'sunscreen', however, the hippo still cannot remain out of the water for too long or its skin will be sensitive to the hot sun and will crack.

Answer: Goose

It is the Canada goose, specifically. 'Branta', the genus, represents swans in general. Canadensis is neo-Latin for "from Canada". Canada geese are further divided into subspecies, including, but not limited to, the Atlantic Canada goose, the giant Canada goose, the interior Canada goose and the Vancouver Canada goose.

Despite the name, the geese can be found outside of Canada, including in the northern United States, particularly around the Great Lakes region. They also migrate south in the winter to southern parts of the US and northern Mexico.

They also occur naturally in northern Europe, in Siberia and in other parts of eastern Asia. They've also been introduced in western Europe, in countries such as the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden.

They were even introduced as game birds in New Zealand in the early 20th century.