Creatures Great and Small Trivia Quiz

Answer: Around lakes, ponds, streams, and other wetlands

Dragonflies are anything but dull; they come in a wide variety of hues, most of which are beautiful and eye-catching. Dragonflies are similar in appearance to damselflies, another insect of the order Odonata that is often strikingly beautiful, and the two are often mistaken for each other by nature-lovers who stroll along canals and rivers or who circle ponds and lakes. The dragonfly feeds on small insects, including mosquitoes, and is in turn prey of animals such as birds and frogs.

Question and information by jonnowales.

Answer: False

There are many of the world's creatures - such as rats, bedbugs, and termites - that aren't particularly welcome at a person's home. On the other hand, the butterfly is generally considered a nice addition to anybody's garden, and because it is typically diurnal, it is a delight to see fluttering around in the daytime. The attractive pigmentation and gentle nature of the butterfly makes it pleasant to have around; however, this insect is very fussy! Butterflies such as the Burgundy, Plum Judy, and painted lady need very specific conditions (food source, weather, etc.) in order to flourish, and this fussiness can lead to species being wiped out very quickly indeed.

Question and information by jonnowales.

Answer: gecko

Geckos can be found in warm places all over the world, and there are around 1,500 different species in the infraorder Gekkota of the class Reptilia. Geckos make a variety of chirping sounds to communicate with each other, and their repetitive "gecko" sounds are sometimes mistaken for bird calls. Because most species of geckos have no eyelids, they lick their eyes to keep them from drying out. They can be very colorful and make good pets. The gharial is also a reptile, but it is a species of crocodile with long narrow jaws. The average size of mature gharials is 3.5 to 4.5 m (11 to 15 ft), but the largest ever found was 6.25 m (20.5 ft), much bigger than a gecko. If a gharial does not say "gharial" it looks as if it should! An aye-aye is a lemur from the island of Madagascar, a small mammal, also named for the sound it makes. A dik-dik is a small African antelope; alarmed female dik-diks make a sound that has earned the whole species its name.

Question and information by nannywoo.

Answer: echolocation

The common shrew (Sorex araneus), also called the Eurasian shrew, is one of the most abundant mammals and can live in a great variety of habitats. Known for their voracious appetites, shrews eat constantly and are opportunistic feeders, devouring earthworms, spiders, wood lice, snails, slugs, small rodents, worms, all sorts of insects, and some seeds and other plant materials. They may eat twice their weight in food daily, because they metabolize food so rapidly they would die if they were without food 24 hours. Shrews and tenrecs are the only animals that live on land who echolocate. The lesser hedgehog tenrec (Echinops telfairi), found only on the island of Madacascar, at 13 to 17 cm (5 to 6.8 inches) a bit larger than the common shrew but still fairly small, is the only other species of land mammal that uses echolocation. The horseshoe bat, a flying mammal, varying in size from 2.5 cm to 14 cm, is a champion of echolocation, using it to pinpoint food, unlike the shrew, who only uses echolocation to explore its surroundings and orient itself within its habitat. Toothed whales - including dolphins, porpoises, river dolphins, killer whales, and sperm whales - all use echolocation but are aquatic animals who are much larger than shrews.

Question and information by nannywoo.

Answer: zero

The coachwhip is a species of snake that can be found slithering across the soily environments and open forests of the USA and Mexico. The coachwhip, which has the binomial name Masticophis flagellum, is a thin, non-venomous snake that averages between about fifty to seventy-five inches and its diet consists of lizards and rodents. If you want to hunt coachwhip snakes, you had better be on the ball; these guys have very good vision and can really get a move on!

Question and information by jonnowales.

Answer: Reynards

The most common species of fox is the red fox (Vulpes vulpes), which lives throughout the northern hemisphere, including North America, Europe, Asia, and the northern edge of Africa. They are considered an invasive species in Australia, where they were introduced by European settlers. The fox is a medium size for an animal, but is smaller than other canines - like wolves and most dogs. Coyotes are slightly larger than foxes but share their reputation for cleverness. Male foxes may be called tod, dog, or simply fox. One name for the male fox, Reynard, comes from European folklore and literature, in which the fox appears as a trickster. Reynard the Fox is a character in Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale" in "The Canterbury Tales"; however, the fox also appears in the imaginative narratives of many cultures - including ancient Mesopotamia, China, Japan, Korea, various tribes of North America and South America, and even the Hebrew Bible. The name for the female fox - vixen - has connotations of a feisty, slightly naughty attractiveness - much like the word "foxy" has for both men and women.

Question and information by nannywoo.

Answer: "Bos" is the Latin word for cow, ox, or bull.

As a child growing up on a farm, nannywoo often wondered why so many cows were named "Bossy" when they actually seemed quite submissive - contented, even - and not bossy at all; of course, the reason for the name derives from Latin, the genus "Bos" being the Latin word for a cow, ox, or bull. Bos primigenius is technically the name for the ancestor of the group, the aurochs, but it is sometimes used as the collective classification for all bovines. Bos Taurus refers to domesticated cattle. The completion of the Bovine Genome sequencing and analysis was reported in the scholarly journal "Science" in 2009.

Question and information by nannywoo.

Answer: Being the tallest terrestrial animal on earth.

The giraffe is the tallest terrestrial animal on Earth; however, it requires an extraordinary amount of force to circulate blood through its system, particularly to its lofty head. Charles Darwin theorised that the elongation of giraffe necks came into existence to facilitate access to food at greater heights than other competing animals. Sleeping as a giraffe would seem cumbersome to me, but, interestingly, whilst giraffes often do sleep lying down for short periods, there have been numerous instances of giraffes sleeping whilst standing!

Question and information by malik24.

Answer: Musth

Musth only affects adult male elephants although younger bulls can experience a weaker state of musth. During musth, elephants may attack both friend and foe alike indiscriminately. They will also be given priority access to females in heat. In addition, testosterone levels rise steeply: potentially to sixty times higher than at normal times. Domesticated elephants are often tied to a tree and starved for several days whilst the musth passes.

Question and information by malik24.

Answer: right whale

According to E.J. Dolin in "Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America" (quoted in Wikipedia) the popular belief that the right whale got its name because it was the "right" whale to hunt and kill may not be the case. Dolin quotes a newspaper article from 1766 as speculating that term means "to connote 'true' or 'proper,' meaning typical of the group [whales]." There are actually three species of right whales, named for their geographical ranges in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Southern Oceans, although they migrate long distances through their respective oceans. Right whales are baleen whales who eat mostly zooplankton and krill, filtering them through their baleen plates as they take in large amounts of sea water.

Question and information by nannywoo.