Goin' Ape About My Shape Trivia Quiz

Answer: Surface tension

Ultimately, it is surface tension which gives the bubble its shape. One of the properties of a sphere is that it has the smallest surface area of any solid with the same volume. Surface tension is a property of liquids acting in effect to give them the small surface area possible. External forces such as gravity distort the shapes of these spheres. Animals such as water striders make use of this property to move across water surfaces.

Answer: For camouflage

Patterns in plants and animals appear to have come about through natural selection. In the case of the leopard, the spotted pattern has proved to be a more effective camouflage than competing patterns, leading to more successful hunts. This increases the chances of survival and of the animal's genes being passed on.

The mechanism behind such spots can be described by the reaction-diffusion theory proposed by Turing amongst others.

Answer: Fractal

With a mathematical history extending several centuries, it was not until the advent of computers that the mathematical concepts could be easily visualised. Mandelbrot was the person to coin the term 'fractal' in the 1970s, bringing together the work of others and producing computer visualisations which captured people's imaginations.

The definition of a fractal can be difficult to pin down. It normally brings to mind repeating patterns at different scales. Other examples from nature which can exhibit fractal features include lightning forks, river networks, snowflakes and trees.

Answer: Alan Turing

The shape of animals is determined by the process of morphogenesis. This includes such things as the spots on a ladybird. In his paper "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" (1952), Turing suggests that actions of specific chemicals cause non-uniform patterns to form (such as stripes and spots), in what has been described as a reaction-diffusion theory.

Turing was also at the heart of British efforts during the Second World War to crack the Enigma cipher machine, operated by the Germans. This was the subject of the 2014 historical thriller "The Imitation Game".

Answer: Fibonacci

Leonardo Bonacci, better known as Fibonacci, helped introduce the Hindu-Arabic numeral system to the Western world with his book "Liber Abaci", published in 1202. In the same book, he introduced the sequence of numbers now bearing his name, although the sequence had been discovered in India as early as the sixth century.

In nature, examples typically have arrangements involving two consecutive Fibonacci numbers. Examples often quoted include flowering artichokes, pineapple fruitlets and the bracts of pine cones. A reasonable question to ask is why they follow such a pattern. The reasons vary but may include maximising the amount of light falling on leaves (in the case of the way leaves are arranged on a branch) to maximising the number of seeds on a seed head.

Answer: Water

In such areas there is not enough rainfall for continuous vegetation. When it rains, the water typically runs off the surface downhill rather being absorbed. Where larger trees get established, by sending a tap root into water-bearing soil, their leaf litter and root systems allow the moisture to be absorbed next to the trees. They, in effect, harvest the water immediately uphill from them, preventing other plants immediately below them from becoming established.

The pattern only develops when the rainfall is insufficient for continuous bush. Shallow gradients are also required. If too steep, the water run-off tends to form into rills or small streams instead of flowing evenly over the surface. Over time the bands of trees and shrubs moves uphill as the vegetation on the uphill-side gets more rainwater than the downhill-side of each band.

Answer: Tessellation

Honeycomb cells are hexagonal in shape. This is an example of evolutionary development with the hexagonal shape representing the most efficient use of resources. There are other natural examples of tessellation: for example, the basaltic columns of the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.

Some wit defined "tessellate" as: to use multisyllabic words incorrectly without knowing their meaning. However this definition should probably be accompanied by a large dose of sodium chloride. The Merriam Webster online dictionary defines "tessellate" as to form into or adorn with mosaic.

The other words could be defined as self-denial (abnegation), wandering (divigation) and the final part of a speech (peroration).

Answer: Mimicry of the competition

The blenny looks like the blue-striped cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus). The wrasse performs cleaning services on larger fish, removing parasites and dead skin. As well as looking like the wrasse, the blenny also performs the same ritualised dance for these potential customers.

The mimicry works for the blenny in two ways: since cleaner wrasse are welcomed by larger fish, they tend not to be eaten by them; secondly, pretending to be a cleaner wrasse allows the blenny to get close enough to take a bite out of larger fish before scuttling for safety. This is called aggressive mimicry. The aggressive mimicry works best where the vast majority of 'cleaners' are genuine.

Answer: Chaos

The pattern on the shell of the venomous sea snail Conus textile (or the Textile Cone) is an example from nature of a cellular automaton named Rule 30, devised by Stephen Wolfram. This particular rule produces chaotic patterns from simple parameters.

The butterfly effect was a term created by Edward Lorenz to describe how an apparently minor change to a parameter can lead to a completely different outcome. In the case of Lorenz, this was in a weather prediction computer modelling programme.

Answer: D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

Thompson's main theme in "On Growth and Form" was his argument that too much emphasis was placed on evolution as the driver of an organism's shape and not enough on mechanics and physics. As such, he put structuralism ahead of survival of the fittest as the main driver.

His book has influenced such fields as architecture, artists such as the sculptor Henry Moore and painter Jackson Pollock, as well as thinkers in biology, mathematics and anthropology.