A Stroll Through the Zoo Trivia Quiz

Answer: Black-tailed prairie dogs

Black-tailed prairie dogs - so-called because the tips of their tails are black - are the most widespread of the five prairie dog species, and can be found from Texas to the Canadian prairies. Prairie dogs are short, fat little creatures and they live in underground colonies.

They're the most social members of the Squirrel Family, and are related to ground squirrels, chipmunks and marmots. The other four species are the white-tailed prairie dog (leucurus), found in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana where it lives at higher altitudes than its black-tailed cousin; Gunnison's prairie dog (gunnisoni) lives at altitudes of 5,000 to 11,000 feet in the Four Corners area of the southwest U.S.; the Mexican prairie dog (mexicanus) is an endangered species found only in certain parts of Mexico; the Utah prairie dog (parvidens) is the smallest of the prairie dogs and it is a threatened species.

Answer: Sloth

Sloths are fascinating animals. Imagine living your whole life in trees and doing everything upside down - eating, sleeping, even giving birth! Sloths sleep around 15 hours a day (maybe that's why they're named after one of the seven deadly sins), and they may take up to a month to digest a meal of leaves, young shoots and buds - their staple diet.

Their life span in the wild is roughly 10-12 years, but they have been known to live up to 40 years in captivity. They're not the cleanest animals in the world, and during the rainy season, their brown or grey coats take on a bloom of bluish-green algae because grooming is not their top priority. Our fellow is a two-toed sloth, but there are also three-toed sloths. Both types of sloth produce one baby per year and the young sloth will stay with his/her mother for a mere five weeks before hanging out on his/her own.

The males are loners, but the females are not averse to gathering in groups. The coati (sometimes called coatimundi, - mundi is a Brazilian slang word) is a raccoon-like creature native to Central and South America, and can also be found in the southernmost part of the United States, as well.

In 2005, one of more of these creatures was seen in the wild in Cumbria, in the the Northern UK. One was captured in a hen house - having just enjoyed a chicken dinner - and it is now safely ensconced in a wildlife park in Dalton-in-Furness. The douroucouli is the world's only nocturnal monkey and it lives in South America, and the tamandua - also known as the lesser anteater - is an animal native to South America.

Answer: Bactrian camels

Bactrian camels (the camels with two humps) are found in the dry and desert areas of Asia. Their single-humped cousins, the dromedaries, are native to deserts of North Africa dry/desert areas and can also be found throughout the Middle East. The dromedaries are the 'Arabian Nights' camels, also called 'Ships of the Desert'. Bactrian camels have two coats - a warm inner coat of fine, soft hair and an outer coat of rougher, longer hair.

They tend to shed their hair in clumps annually and this is gathered to be woven, blending both the soft and rough hairs into a wool that is very similar to cashmere.

These interesting animals can go for up to a week without food and water because they subsist on the fat stored in their humps, and their long lashes protect their eyes from the sun and sand. Warning: Don't stand too close to the fence if the camels are close by because they spit.

Their spit - apart from being messy - can sting your skin! Camels, and their South American cousins - the llamas, vicunas, alpacas and guacanos -are members of the Camelidae family.

Answer: Their tails

The major difference between monkeys from the Americas and monkeys from Africa and Asia is the fact that New World monkeys have prehensile tails, while Old World monkeys do not. All monkeys have forward-facing eyes, like those of humans, and while their diets may vary by species and the plants and insects available to them in their native habitat, most monkeys eat fruit, leaves, seeds, nuts, flowers, insects, spiders, eggs and even small animals. Monkeys range in size from the tiny pygmy marmoset who is a mere 14-16cm (5-6 inches) long, including its tail, and weighs only 120-140g (4-5 ounces) to the hefty male mandrill, which can grow to a length of 1 metre (3 feet) and weigh in at 35kg (75 pounds).

Answer: Snow leopard

Snow leopards have soft grey coats with ringed black or brown spots. Their heavily-furred tails are proportionately longer than the tails of other big cats and provide a counter-balance for the snow leopards as they navigate the steep, snow and ice-covered slopes of their mountainous habitat. Snow leopards also use their tails to cover their noses and mouths when the temperatures dip below the freezing point.

Their big furry feet act like snowshoes, allowing them to walk across deep snow without floundering.

In the summer, they prefer to live above the tree line on mountain meadows, at an altitude of up to 6000m, but when winter sets in they descend some 4000m into the forests. Rarely seen in the wild, they are loners and do not travel in packs like lions.

They eat ibex, bharal, boars, marmots and other small rodents, and aren't above preying on domesticated animals when the hunger push comes to shove. Interesting trivia: unlike the big cats, snow leopards cannot roar.

Answer: Gnu

"I'm a g-nu, I'm a g-nu, the g-nicest work of g-nature in the zoo. I'm a g-nu, I'm a g-nu. Call me bison or okapi and I'll sue. And I'm g-nothing in the least like that dreadful hartebeest. Oh, g-no, g-no, g-no - I'm a g-nu!" Evidently, the Khoikhoi name derives from the grunting sound made by these grass-eating ungulates. Providing that they don't fall prey to lions or hyenas, for whom they are a major food source, gnus can live up to 20 years in the wild. Because of the seasonal nature of the African grasslands, gnus migrate from the plains to the woodlands in May and they return to the plains in November with the rainy season.

They are notorious for their stampedes, when up to 500 of the beasts will suddenly bolt and achieve speeds of up to 80kph (50mph) for as long as 30 minutes. Wildebeest is their Afrikaans name.

Answer: Platypus

The platypus (sometimes called the duck-billed platypus because of its rubbery snout that is shaped like a duck's bill) is an anomaly among mammals. It is a monotreme - meaning that it lays eggs. It also suckles its young. Its body and broad flat beaver-like tail are covered in brown fur that traps air between the layers to keep the platypus warm, and it has webbed feet, useful for swimming (that broad tail also serves as a rudder in water).

Despite its appearance, the platypus' 'bill' does not open like a duck's bill.

It is primarily a sensory organ, with its opening (the mouth) on the underside of the 'bill'. The short-beaked echidna and the long-beaked echidna are the other two egg-laying mammals.

Answer: Sri Lankan elephant

The forest elephant is one of the two species of African elephant - the other is the African bush elephant. There is only one species of Asian elephant (usually called the Indian elephant although it is also native to 11 other Asian countries, from India to Indonesia), and there are three sub-species - the Sri Lankan Asian elephant (the largest of the Asian elephants, found only in Sri Lanka), the Sumatran Asian elephant (found, as its name implies, in Sumatra.

It is smaller than its Indian or Sr Lankan relatives), and the third, identified in 2003, is the Borneo pygmy elephant, which is the smallest of the Asian elephants.

However, the Borneo pygmy elephant has relatively larger ears, a longer tail and straighter tusks than its bigger cousins.

The existence of both African and Asian elephants is threatened, primarily because of human activity. The African elephant population stood at roughly 3,000,000 in 1979 and by 2003 there were only between 400,000 and 660,000 left. The decline of the Asian elephant population has not been as dramatic, but there are only approximately 40,000 Asian elephants left in the wild. Both African and Asian elephants are now protected species.

There are restrictions on their capture and domestic use, and a worldwide ban on trade in ivory and other products made from elephant hides or hair.

Answer: Quagga

According to the late Stephen J. Gould in his book 'Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History', zebras are black with white stripes. The quagga was hunted to extinction (for meat, its hide and because it competed with grazing livestock for food).

The last one in the wild was shot in the late 1870s and the last quagga in captivity died in 1883 at the Artis Magistra Zoo in Amsterdam. The quagga is the first extinct animal to have had its DNA studied (by genetic researchers at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.).

The Plains zebra is the most common zebra, and the one you usually see in all those African wildlife documentaries. The Mountain zebra has a sleek coat with narrower stripes than those sported by the Plains zebra.

It is an endangered species. Grevy's zebra is the largest of the zebra species extant, with an erect mane and a mule-like head. It, too is endangered and is one of the rarest of the zebra species.

Answer: It's a living fossil

In 2005 naturalist Paulina Jenkins of the Department of Zoology of the Natural History Museum in London and her co-authors published an article identifying a previously-unknown rodent native to the Khammouan region of Laos. The animal had been 'discovered' in local food markets and was being sold for food.

The article came to the attention of Mary Dawson, curator emeritus of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. Dawson determined that the kha-nyou, as the Laotians call it, was not a new species at all, but a living fossil - an animal thought to have been extinct for 11 million years.

In June of 2006, Dr. David Redfield, a retired Florida State University professor, went to Laos and brought back videotape of the little creature, which looks like a cross between a rat and a squirrel.

It is dark grey to black in colour, and has a peculiarly duck-like waddle when it walks. Living fossils are not really all that uncommon, by the way - think of the coelecanth and the okapi, both of which were thought to be extinct and aren't.