Why Don't Sheep Shrink When it Rains? Quiz

Answer: Angora

The Cheviot, Jacob and Southdown are all breeds of sheep which are found in the UK. The Cheviot is bred for its meat and wool, and is named after a range of hills on the England/Scotland border. It is a hardy breed, and can also be found in Wales and on the moors of south west England. The Southdown is primarily used for meat and originates from Sussex. The Jacob sheep is black and white and was originally called a piedbald. It is sometimes kept as a pet and can also be used for wool, meat and hides. The Angora is a breed of goat, the hair of which is used to make mohair.

The most common answers to the question 'why don't sheep shrink when it rains' are 'because of the lanolin in their skin/wool' and/or 'because it's hot water that shrinks wool'. My favourite answer is 'they do shrink, but they move closer to you so you think they're still the same size'.

Answer: Crash

Flock and pride are the most commonly used ones, but wobble also appears regularly as an option and I have also seen herd used. Crash is the collective noun used for rhinoceroses. Ostriches are native to Africa, are the largest bird species and also lay the largest eggs. Although they are flightless, they can run at speeds of up to 43 miles per hour (70 km per hour) over short distances. They can maintain a steady speed of 31 mph (50 kph) over long distances.

This question was inspired by the question 'why do ostriches bury their heads in the sand?'. The answer is that they do not, but they do have a defensive behaviour of lying on the ground with their necks stretched out to blend in with the background. This can give the appearance that their heads have been buried, and has given rise to the saying of 'burying ones head in the sand' meaning to avoid tackling a problem which needs attention. It is true, however, that the brain of an ostrich is smaller than its eye.

Answer: Lily

Several species of lily, including the Easter lily, Tiger lily and Day lily can be extremely dangerous if ingested by cats. Symptoms include vomiting, lethargy and lack of appetite leading to kidney failure unless veterinary treatment is obtained. My thanks are due to aspca.org for these details.

I was prompted to write this question by 'why do cats fall on their feet?'. The short answer is 'they don't always', but they do have built-in mechanisms to make it more likely that they will, including a flexible backbone. While researching, I also discovered the 'buttered cat paradox', which combines two sayings - that cats always fall on their feet, while buttered toast always falls butter side down. John Frazee from New York won a prize from 'OMNI' magazine in 1993 for posing the question 'what would happen if you attached a piece of toast, butter side up, to a cat, and then dropped the cat?'.

Answer: Pup

The most common hamster kept as a pet is the Syrian hamster, which must be kept alone as hamsters fight if kept with another. The name 'hamster' comes from the German word 'hamstern' meaning hoard. This is because the hamster stores food in its cheek pouches and also in caches within the cage. In the wild, hamsters live in burrows with tunnels and chambers for sleeping and food storage. Syrian hamsters give birth to eight pups on average, but litters of ten to fourteen are not uncommon. I would like to acknowledge www.petwebsite.com for this information.

My prompt for this question was 'why don't hamsters have good eyesight?'. The reason for this is that they are nocturnal animals, and spend most of the day in their burrows to avoid the heat and predators. Hamsters do not normally hibernate, but can go into a state of torpor in low temperatures which makes them appear to be dead. This may have been the trigger for Mick O'Hare's book called 'How to Fossilize Your Hamster'.

Answer: Dabbling

Dabbling ducks are in the family Anatidae and feed by dipping into the water and by upending themselves, so we see only their tails while they are feeding. They also forage on land for food. Ducks in this family include the Mallard, Teal and Wigeon. Diving ducks include the Pochards and Tufted Duck, and they feed at the bottom of ponds.

This question arose from the query 'why don't ducks get wet?'. The answer is that their feathers are covered with an oily coating so water forms beads rather than soaking in. This gives us the expression 'water off a duck's back' meaning that something said or done has had no impact on a person. Duck comes from the Old English word 'duce' meaning to dive and it also gives us the alternative meaning of duck being to bend low under an obstruction. A duck in the game of cricket, which means that the batsman has not scored any runs, is an abbreviation of the term 'duck's egg'.

Answer: Iceland

Polar bears are found in the wild in five countries - USA (Alaska), Canada, Russia, Greenland (officially part of Denmark) and Norway. Occasionally, polar bears do find their way to Iceland by travelling on ice floes and swimming. There are recorded instances of this in 1993, 2008 and 2010, but each time, the animal was shot dead on the grounds that it posed a risk to the local population.

The question in this case is the title of the book 'Do Polar Bears Get Lonely?', which is another in the series from the New Scientist's 'Last Word' column. The explanation for their solitary existence is to avoid competition for food resources. The other question I could have used is 'do polar bears eat penguins?' - the answer being 'of course not; they can't get the wrappers off'.

Answer: Gib

A unneutered male is called a hob, an unspayed female is a jill and a spayed female is a sprite. The young are called kits, and a group of ferrets is known as a business. Ferrets are a domesticated relative of the polecat, and are members of the musteline family, which also includes the mink and otter. In the UK, they were used to hunt rabbits as they can fit into rabbit holes. A gib can also refer to a neutered tomcat and a capon is a neutered fowl. A wether can apply to either a sheep or a goat.

This question was prompted by the question 'can ferrets climb?'. The general answer seems to be that they are primarily burrowing animals and don't climb trees. They do, however, climb trouser legs. In the rather strange sport of 'ferret legging', which appears to have originated in Yorkshire, competitors have their trousers tied at the ankles and waist with two ferrets inside. The winner is the man who survives the longest as the ferrets try to escape. No underwear is allowed, the ferrets must not be doped or have had their teeth removed and must be hungry. This practice may have originated from poachers hiding ferrets, as only the wealthy were allowed to own them in the past.

Answer: Smell

Pigs have long snouts, and an excellent sense of smell. Because of this, and their foraging ability, they are used in Europe to search for truffles. Their eyesight is poor, hearing only average, and no research seems to have been done on their sense of touch. Pigs have no sweat glands, and create wallows in mud to enable them to cool down. They are also classed as among the most intelligent of animals, higher than dogs.

The stimulus for this question was 'do pigs really suffer from sunburn?'. In fact, they do, and this is another reason for their wallowing. The mud helps protect their skin from the sun. Pigs are also excellent swimmers, which helped two pigs named 'The Tamworth Two' to escape their fate in an abattoir in the UK in January 1998. The two pigs, dubbed 'Butch' and 'Sundance', squeezed through a fence and swam across a river, evading capture for more than a week. They were found eventually, but were saved from death by a national newspaper, which bought them and sent them to an animal sanctuary.

Answer: Basset hound

Labradors and Golden retrievers were both bred as gun dogs to retrieve waterfowl shot by hunters. Since this was usually over water, the dogs needed to swim and they have webbed feet which helps in this activity. The Newfoundland was developed as a working dog to assist fishermen, and have great strength and swimming abilities. By contrast, the Basset hound has a bulky body and short legs, and can swim only very short distances.

I was prompted to write this question by finding 'why do dogs turn around before lying down?' on the internet. The usual answer given is that it is an inherited behaviour from the days when dogs were wild. By turning, they could check that there were no hidden dangers, such as snakes, and also to make a comfortable bed by pushing down long grass. I also found this quotation from Steve Bluestone - 'Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him in a car he sticks his head out of the window?'.

Answer: Rabbits

The disease is caused by the myxoma virus, which was originally discovered in Uruguay in 1896. In 1951, it was deliberately introduced in Australia to control growing numbers of rabbits, and was taken to France, illegally, in 1952. From here, it spread to the UK and wiped out huge numbers of wild rabbits. It can also affect domestic rabbits, as it is spread by the rabbit flea, although a vaccine is available.

The inspiration for this question came from 'why does the Easter bunny bring eggs when rabbits don't lay eggs?'. The tradition of the Easter bunny appears to have originated in Germany. Both rabbits and eggs are symbols of fertility and new life in pagan tradition. The idiom 'breed like rabbits' is applied to families with numerous children as rabbits are renowned for the number of kits they produce in a year, which can be as many as twenty for one doe.