Extreme Mammals Trivia Quiz

Answer: Cheetah

A cheetah resembles a leopard, but its spots (2-3 thousand of them!) are rounder and not arranged in rosettes, and it has tear lines running from eyes to mouth. Cheetahs can accelerate up to 60 miles per hours in three seconds, but they can go even faster, at speeds up to 75 miles an hour (for short distances, of course). Most cheetahs live in eastern and southwestern Africa.

Although once there was a sizable population in Iran, very few are left there. With their excellent eyesight, cheetahs can spot prey up to three miles away -- including wildebeest, warthogs, birds, zebras, gazelles, deer, antelopes and impalas. Cheetahs avoid fighting, however, and will quickly give up their kills to hyenas, lions, and other competitors.

Answer: Three-toed sloth

Sloths move slowly because their diet of leaves gives them minimal energy and nutrition. They are so slow, in fact, that algae grows on their fur, but this covering helps camouflage them from predators like eagles, snakes, and jaguars. Sloths spend most of their lives in trees, but they have proven to be agile swimmers. Very tidy, they climb down to urinate and defecate in the same place, and only once a week.

Although associated with laziness, sloths sleep but 10 hours a day, far less than the koala or the domestic cat. Sloths are nocturnal, and like an owl, they can turn their head about 270 degrees.

Answer: Blue whale

A blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) grows up to 100 feet (30m) long and weighs up to 200 tons (181 metric tons). Its tongue alone weighs as much as an elephant, and her heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle! A human child could crawl through its aorta!

Yet the blue whale feeds on the smallest of all ocean creatures, krill, which are tiny crustacean plankton resembling shrimp. Having no teeth, the blue whale strains its food with baleen, plates of whalebone in the mouth. Blue whales swim in all the oceans of the world.

Answer: African bush elephant

The African bush elephant, or Loxodonta africana, is bigger than even the Asian elephant or the African forest elephant. Just to compare, whereas the average newborn baby human weighs 7 lbs. (3.175 kg), a newborn baby African bush elephant can weigh 260 lbs (180 kg). A bull African bush elephant will tip the scales at about 5-7 metric tons (11-15,000 lbs), with a shoulder height of 10-13 feet (3-4 m). Females (cows) are considerably smaller, averaging 3 metric tons (about 6600 lbs) at a height of 8-1/2 feet (2.6 m), but still ponderous indeed.

The elephant is an excellent swimmers and can travel relatively long distances in the water, using its trunk as a snorkel. African elephants use their great ears to fan heat from their bodies. (Both species of African elephants, bush and forest, have the distinctive Africa-shaped ears. Usually when North American zookeepers are showing or talking about African elephants, however, they mean African bush elephants).

Answer: Giraffe

The adult male giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) can reach heights of 18 feet (5.5 m) and the female 14 feet (4.3 m). Even a newborn giraffe, at 6 feet (1.8 m), is taller than the majority of human beings. Six feet also happens to be the length of an adult male giraffe's neck, which by the way alone weighs 600 lbs. (272 kg). The giraffe's tongue is about 21 inches (53 cm) long!

Unfortunately, this gentle giant, who occupies the savannas of Africa, semi-arid plains with scattered trees and bushes, is silently going extinct.

Answer: Bumblebee bat

Also known as Kitti's hog-nosed bat, this little native of Thailand weighs in at just barely 2 grams and measures 1-1.3 inches (~3cm) long, about the size of a large bumblebee. It also has the smallest skull of any living mammal.

Like all microbats, the Craseonycteris thonglongyai uses echolocation to pinpoint food. Unfortunately, its habitat has been disturbed by tourists wishing to glimpse the world's tiniest mammal by size, although the greatest threat to its habitat is the burning of the forest near the limestone caves in which it humbly resides.

Answer: Etruscan shrew

Weighing in at 0.063 ounces (1.8 g), the Etruscan shrew is the smallest mammal by weight, lighter even than the bumblebee bat. Also known as the white-toothed pygmy shrew, the Suncus etruscus is about 1-1/2 inches (4 cm) long, not counting the tail. Yet its appetite is huge, and the ravenous shrew will eat twice its body weight daily in insects, larvae, and earthworms -- and baby rodents and lizards if it can get them. Like most shrews, it is ferocious, and not afraid to prey on animals almost as big as itself! Etruscan shrews live only along the Mediterranean lowlands, from Portugal to Arabia, although they have been introduced to the Canaries and are found in the Maltese islands as well.

Answer: Sperm whale

Although many textbooks teach that the blue whale has the loudest call, at 188 decibels (dB), in fact the sperm whale has been recorded with calls at 230 dB. Compare that to a jet plane at 140 dB! A sperm whale's click, however, lasts a mere 100 microseconds, while a blue whale's call may last from 10 to 30 seconds, This may explain the discrepancy, as a sperm whale's click is almost over before it starts!

Answer: Howler monkey

The Howler monkey (Alouatta caraya) of South America is of course named for its famous guttural call, typically made at the beginning and end of the day. No other animal of the Americas is louder! Their calls, which can be heard up to three miles away through the dense tropical rainforest, warn competitors to stay away from their territories.

Some of this display may be compensatory, for according to a 2015 European Research Council paper by J. C. Dunn et al, the louder the calls, the smaller the howler's balls. (No one said primatologists had to be circumspect.) Like most New World monkeys, their tails are fully prehensile.

Not only the loudest, howler monkeys are among the largest primates of the New World (save man), yet they are among the least active (save man?), spending about 80% of their lives at rest.

Answer: Blue whale

In studies conducted by Brazilian and U.S. scientists in 1968, the incomparable blue whale had the highest body fat percentage, at 35%. So the biggest and the loudest mammal on Earth is also the fattest!

Now in the 2010s, a Dr. Craig George observed yearling bowhead whales in the Arctic Ocean with blubber about two feet (half a meter) thick, giving them a body fat percentage of 43% to 50%. Dr. George noted the body fat percentage would be greater if one included the fat in the tongue, the gut, and the bone (yes, bone).

Baby elephant, hooded, and harp seals also reach close to 50% bodyfat at weaning time. But these seals and bowhead whales lose their "baby fat" in adulthood, which means the ponderous Balaenoptera musculus still wins the prize!