Find the Hidden Mammals! Trivia Quiz

Answer: bat

BATtle your fear of the dark to find the Earth's only flying mammal.

Bats are the only mammals which can fly continuously like birds. Bats are nocturnal, meaning they are only active at night. They use echolocation to help see in the dark. This works by bouncing sound waves off of walls and judging the distance between them and objects by how long it takes for the sound wave to return. Bats can help us by eating pesky insects like mosquitoes. Although they have a bad reputation due to the blood-sucking kind, they tend to leave humans alone.

Answer: hare

I always want to sHARE my excitement when I find this fast rabbit-like mammal.

Hares are like rabbits except they are larger and have longer ears. The fastest hare can reach staggering speeds of over 45 miles per hour, all to avoid being eaten. Hares are typically docile and unthreatening and like to eat grass, seeds, fruit and vegetables.

Answer: otter

Tarka was nOT TERribly hard to find playing near the water.

Tarka the Otter was the main character in Henry Williamson's realistic novel, published in 1927. Like Tarka, real otters have sleek fur, webbed feet and closable nostrils to help them splash around. Despite their love of water, otters actually spend the majority of their lives on ground. Though they have a versatile diet, otters tend to eat fish. Impressively, they can use tools to solve problems. If a clam or oyster shell won't open, they can use a rock to help prise it apart.

Answer: bear

It was unBEARable when Goldilocks entered ...

In the famous nursery tale, Goldilocks found and entered the empty house of the three bears. She sat on their chairs, ate their porridge and fell asleep in the youngest bear's bed. When she woke up, she saw the three grumpy bears who had come back home and she then ran away in fright. The story's morals suggest the importance of respecting the property of others and keeping safe from danger. Real bears are far more ferocious than those in the tale if they feel their territory is being intruded upon. Otherwise, they tend not to hunt humans.

Answer: fox

Like Robin Hood, this sly mammal could outFOX anyone.

In 1973, Disney released a film based on the popular tale of Robin Hood. A fox was used as the title character to encapsulate Robin Hood's wily ways of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. The fox's cunning reputation in the real world may come from its crafty hunting and foraging abilities. Foxes are also rather versatile animals. Whilst they prefer to live alone, be active at night and live underground in dens, they can act differently if necessary for survival.

Answer: moose

I would quickly vaMOOSE if I met the largest deer species by surprise.

Deer are often associated with being flighty and easy to scare. However, moose are more courageous and can be aggressive if provoked. Male moose have massive horns known as antlers which tend to only come into use during the mating season. To attract females, they bellow loudly and battle other males, the winner taking the female as his prize. After the breeding season ends, they shed their antlers in the winter and grow new ones.

Answer: rat

The Bubonic plague sadly obliteRATed Europe's population with this pesky mammal's help.

The Bubonic plague - or Black Death - was a staggering illness that killed a third of the world's population between 1340 and 1400. Rats carried fleas which then transmitted the disease to humans. Since there was no known cure at the time, the mortality rate was great. Rats still have a reputation for being pests, as they can easily sneak into homes and eat anything they can find. They can also multiply quickly, as rats can have 4-6 litters a year with 6-12 babies in each!

Answer: dog

Fido was DOGged in his gleeful pursuit for the bone.

Man's best friend, the domestic dog, was originally bred from the grey wolf. The wolves used bone-crushing teeth to reach nutritious bone marrow within the bones. It is theorised by some scientists that dogs love bones because the desire to earn the bone marrow was passed down through evolution. This may account for why dogs will chew even bones that lack any further nutritional value... but, we still love them for it.

Answer: ape

Tarzan enjoyed whimsical cAPErs with his primate pal.

Tarzan was Edgar Rice Burroughs' protagonist in 'Tarzan of the Apes', published in 1914 and later adapted into a Disney film which was released in 1999. In the film, Tarzan was adopted by a gorilla (a type of ape) and taken as one of their own. This was apt in a way as apes are considered to be one of our closest genetic relatives, with the chimpanzee (another type of ape) thought to share 98.6% of genes with us!

Answer: panda

I claP AND Applaud whenever someone helps this black and white bamboo-eating animal to survive.

The giant panda is native to China and is an international symbol of conservation. They must eat up to ten kilograms of bamboo (a long grass) a day in order to survive. The main reason they must eat so much is that their digestive system is designed to eat meat and can only extract a limited amount of energy from bamboo. The panda also has a slow reproductive rate - the female is only fertile once a year for two to three days. Hunting and habitat loss have made it even harder for pandas to thrive, which is why they are an endangered species and need our help to survive.