General

Question 1

Beavers, muskrats, capybaras, platypi, and otters are all mammals with what unusual anatomical feature, which they share with many birds, including ducks–but not coots?

Answer 1

Webbed feet

Question 2

What is the desert-dwelling fox species seen here? Antoine de Saint-Exupery reported taming and raising while working as an airmail pilot on the southern Moroccan coast in the 1920s, which may have helped inspire the fox in the Little Prince. It’s also a common nickname for the Algerian national men’s soccer team, thus giving them the cutest nickname in world soccer.

Answer 2

Fennec

Question 3

The distinctive coloring of the animal pictured here is best known by what Spanish-derived term?

Answer 3

Palomino

Question 4

Its name is derived from the Greek for “river horse.”

Answer 4

Hippopotamus

Question 5

Scaphopoda, gastropoda and bivalvia are among orders in which animal phylum?

Answer 5

Mollusca

Question 6

The english name of this animal is derived from a Powhatan word that means “animal that scratches with hands.” Similarly, the Spanish word for that same animal – mapache – comes from an Aztec word that means “one who takes everything in its hands.”

Answer 6

Racoon

Question 7

What’s the most common pet in America today, with a total of 139 million owned, half again as many as any other type of pet?

Answer 7

Fish–specifically freshwater ones–are the most populous pet in America, outnumbering the second-place pet (cats) by over fifty million.

Question 8

The only species of this mammal found in the U.S. is the nine-banded one.

Answer 8

Armadillo

Question 9

The echidnas and platypus of Australia and New Guinea, who lay eggs and have a single opening for reproduction and elimination of waste, are the only living members of the most primitive of three conventional groups of mammals (in comparison to placentals and marsupials). This group is known as—and is categorized within the mammalian taxonomic order of—what?

Answer 9

Monotremes

Question 10

This type of elephant is the largest land animal in the world.

Answer 10

African Bush Elephant / African Savanna Elephant

Question 11

What animal causes the most human deaths per year?

Answer 11

Mosquito

Question 12

The only four-horned animal in the world is a variety of this species.

Answer 12

Antelope

Question 13

What is the only land animal that is native to Iceland?

Answer 13

Arctic Fox

Question 14

This marsupial is the only member of the Setonix genus. It can primarily be found on smaller islands of the coast of Western Australia, particularly Rottnest Island.

Answer 14

Quokka

Question 15

To fool predators some species of frogs use thanatosis, this defensive behavior.

Answer 15

Playing dead

Question 16

This extinct subspecies of archaic humans in the genus Homo is named after the first site where their fossils were first discovered in the mid-19th century.

Answer 16

Neanderthal (Neander Valley, Germany)

Question 17

What animal is the only ratite native to Africa?

Answer 17

A ratite is not a rodent but a subclass of flightless birds (from a Latin word meaning “raft-shaped,” referring to their breastbones). The only African ratite is the largest one of them all, the ostrich.

Question 18

Scientific name Mellivora capensis, this 2-word weasel family member was named “Most Fearless Mammal.”

Answer 18

Honey Badger

Question 19

Yes yes, this nocturnal lemur seen here uses an elongated finger to pry insects from trees.

Answer 19

Aye Aye

Question 20

What feature does an animal have if it is an “ungulate”?

Answer 20

Hooves

Question 21

The tardigrade, a microscopic animal, is sometimes referred to as the “water” type of what other animal?

Answer 21

Those little guys are water-bears. I think you might have seen them in the Ant-Man movies.

Question 22

Among cattle, generally speaking, a non-castrated adult male is a bull, a castrated male raised for beef is a steer, a castrated male trained as a draft or riding animal is an ox, an adult female that has given birth is a cow, and a young unweaned bovine of either sex is a calf. What is the most common term for a young female who has not borne a calf of her own?

Answer 22

Heifer

Question 23

Rescued from a forest fire in 1950, what type of bear was the real Smokey Bear?

Answer 23

Black Bear

Question 24

Among the world’s very few cold-blooded mammal species is an animal that lives in the deserts of East Africa and is commonly known by a name that is triply inaccurate (as it does have some hair and is not a member of the Talpidae family, though it is a rodent). What is that name?

Answer 24

Naked Mole Rat

Question 25

What name for a particular type of gastropod is also a unit of mass in the imperial system of units, as well as a term for a solid ballistic projectile?

Answer 25

Slug

Question 26

The disease formally named Canine Infectious Tracheobronchitis is more commonly referred to by what alliterative name?

Answer 26

Kennel Cough

Question 27

Reindeer is a familiar term in North America—thanks in no small part to a certain red-nosed fellow—but the species (Rangifer tarandus) is more often referred to in Canada and the US by what other common name?

Answer 27

Caribou