Look! Animals! Click Here! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Flamingo

Flamingos wouldn't have their bright pink or orange coloring, if they didn't eat a diet high in alpha and beta carotenoids. In the wild, they get the carotenoid pigments from eating foods such as shrimp or algae. In captivity, they're given a synthetic version of the same carotenoids to preserve their color.

Answer: Raccoon

Raccoons are native to North America and have adapted well to human settlements, taking advantage of garbage and gardens to supplement their omnivorous diet. Mostly nocturnal, they have a black facial marking that looks like a mask. Though they may appear to be washing their food or their hand-like paws in nearby water before eating, scientists believe cleanliness isn't the reason for the behavior.

It may be to increase the sensitivity of their paws, or it may be a habit left over from grasping for edible things along pond and stream banks.

Answer: Gray wolf

Domestic dogs descended from gray wolves at least 15,000 years ago, and maybe as long as 130,000 years ago, according to DNA analysis. Though scientists aren't sure exactly how the relationship began, some wolves may have begun hanging around humans, probably for food or warmth, and humans gradually adopted the tamest ones, selectively breeding them over the centuries for different tasks and appearances.

The other wolves, who didn't go near humans, continued to breed naturally and became the ancestors of today's wolves.

Answer: Kangaroo

Kangaroo babies, called joeys, are hairless, blind, and barely an inch long when they're born, but they have strong front legs that allow them to climb into their mother's pouch, where they nurse and grow until old enough to be out on their own. Each mother usually gives birth to one joey at a time, but as soon as it is born, she can become pregnant again. Male kangaroos, more than females, engage in fights to display their dominance, using their forepaws like human boxers or wrestlers.

The kangaroo has long been a classic symbol of its native land, Australia.

Answer: Octopus

Besides being intelligent enough to use tools and solve problems, octopuses share with a few other sea creatures the ability to send out a cloud of ink to minimize visibility and odor, to give them time to get away from predators. They can even include thicker globs of ink mixed with mucus, which appear like creatures in the murky cloud, fooling predators into chasing the wrong thing.

The mimic octopus, in particular, is an expert at imitating various more dangerous sea creatures to fool predators. Octopuses can also regrow arms lost to predators or accidents.

Answer: Little brown bat

Vampire bats of South and Central America live on blood and may bite any mammal, including humans, but little brown bats of North America feed only on insects. They use echolocation, or natural sonar, to navigate the dark skies and catch insects on the wing.

A little brown bat can consume half its weight in bugs in a night. North American bats were traditionally thought to be dangerous carriers of rabies, but a 2011 study by researchers at the University of Calgary indicated that the prevalence of rabies is lower than thought, only about one percent.

Answer: A species of penguin

Emperor penguins are well adapted for cold. Their feathers, a hundred per square inch, are more densely spaced than any other bird's, and they also have a downy undercoat. The feathers are held out from the body to provide extra insulation on land, but lie flat in water to keep the undercoat dry. Beneath the skin, a thick layer of fat provides more insulation. Emperor penguin are also able to control their oxygen use and handle extreme pressures, allowing them to dive deep and long for fish.

Answer: Mongoose

Mongooses are quick and agile hunters. Combine that with a natural resistance to snake venom, and one can see why people in their native areas of southern Asia and Africa adopted them to get rid of poisonous snakes in and around homes. Mongooses don't particularly like to eat snakes, though, so they also kill birds, lizards, insects and rodents.

They were introduced into Hawaii and the West Indies in the Nineteenth Century to control rats and snakes, but the mongooses did more damage than good, because they devastated harmless native species. Since then, importation of them, like civets and a few other animals for various reasons, is tightly restricted in many areas.

Answer: Galapagos tortoise

The giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands were headed for extinction due to hunting and the introduction of non-native animals that ate their eggs, but conservation efforts are protecting the remaining populations. Some species were still unfortunately lost. Lonesome George, the last of the Pinta species, died in 2012 at over 100 years old.

His lifespan was actual unremarkable, as other Galapagos tortoises have lived much longer, including Harriet, who died at over 170 years old at an Australian zoo.

Answer: Giant panda

Giant pandas really do look like big cuddly stuffed animals. Their striking black and white coloration seems unusual for an animal that spends most of its time in green bamboo forests. Scientists still aren't sure whether the colors make the animals more visible so they can find each other, or are a camouflage in the dappled bright and dark light of the forest. DNA testing did finally solve the question of whether they're bears: yes they are.

Their natural home is in southwest China, where habitat destruction and other factors make them an endangered species, but zoos around the world are working to rear more cubs and save the species from extinction.