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27. Sweet oranges (Citrus sinensis) originated in Southeast Asia. Oranges got to Florida and California by Spaniards during the Columbus expeditions. Although oranges were cultivated in Florida in the sixteenth century, they did not arrive in California until the late eighteenth century.
28. Pineapples did not originate in Hawaii (where they were introduced in 1790 by explorer James Cook) but in the inland areas of Brazil and Paraguay. When European explorers discovered the tropical fruit, they called it pineapple (first recorded in 1664) because of its resemblance to what is now known as the pinecone. Originally, the English word pineapple was used to describe the reproductive organs of conifer trees (now called pinecones). The term pinecone, first recorded in 1694, was used to replace the original meaning of pineapple.
Quiz 2
Biology
1. What kind of animal is a jackrabbit?
2. What kind of animal is a Belgian hare?
3. What kind of animal is a horned toad?
4. What color is a purple finch?
5. What is a titmouse?
6. After vampire bats bite hosts, how do they get to the blood?
7. How are cougars distinguished from panthers and mountain lions?
8. Through what body part do elephants drink?
9. What is special about a goldfish’s memory?
10. Which African mammal kills the most human beings?
11. Where do gorillas sleep?
12. What is the longest animal?
13. What are most guinea pigs used for?
14. Where do most tigers live?
15. What is a sea cucumber?
16. Ornithologically, what is the difference between a pigeon and a dove?
17. Where do dogs do most of their sweating?
18. What color is your brain?
19. According to evolutionary theory, human beings descended from what?
20. Of these traits, having backbones or spinal columns, mammary glands, sweat glands, and hair and bearing live young, which one is not possessed by all mammals?
21. Which bird lays the lightest egg relative to its weight?
22. What is the world ’s most common bird?
23. What body part or parts do beavers use to tamp down the mud in their dams?
24. When polar bears are kept in warm, humid conditions, what color can their fur turn?
25. What will happen if you cut an earthworm in half?
26. Which animal would win in a quarter-mile race, an ostrich or a whippet?
27. What do dolphins drink?
28. Of mice, giraffes, whales, and human beings, which animal has the most neck bones?
29. What is the favorite food of mice?
30. What happens to a sea cucumber after it expels its vital organs in response to an attack?
31. What does it mean to call a horse a Thoroughbred?
32. What is the normal human body temperature in degrees Fahrenheit?
33. Why are flamingos pink?
34. What do salmon do after spawning?
35. What do opossums do when attacked?
36. Why are grizzly bears called grizzly?
37. What are horseshoe crabs?
38. Which mammal has the most teeth?
39. What are male sharks called?
40. What are female sharks called?
41. What are female chimps called?
42. What do porcupines do with their quills?
43. In what sort of climate do penguins live?
44. What is the difference between bulls and oxen?
45. What kind of fish is a sardine?
46. What would happen if you were to handle a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest?
47. What do lemmings tend to do when they are near cliffs?
48. What is the world ’s largest fish?
49. When opossums are in trees, what do they do with their tails?
50. What happens to a shark if it stops swimming?
Quiz 2 Answers
Biology
1. A jackrabbit is a hare (which, unlike a rabbit, is born with hair, is sighted at birth, and hops more than it runs; it has larger ears than those of a rabbit). By the way, Bugs Bunny appears to be a hare rather than a rabbit.
2. A Belgian hare is a rabbit.
3. A horned toad is a lizard.
4. A male purple finch is crimson, and a female purple finch is brown-gray flecked.
5. A titmouse is a bird.
6. Vampire bats get their prey’s blood not by sucking but by licking the blood, much as a cat laps cream.
7. Cougars, panthers, and mountain lions are the same animal.
8. Elephants do not drink through their trunks, which are used simply to transport the water to their mouths; they drink through their mouths.
9. Goldfish memories last longer than three seconds, contrary to what is commonly believed. In fact, goldfish have been trained to navigate mazes and reportedly can recognize their owners after an exposure of a few months.
10. The African mammal that kills the most human beings is the hippopotamus.
11. Gorillas sleep in nests, consisting of bent branches woven together with softer foliage as a mattress. Although female gorillas and young gorillas prefer to sleep in trees, males tend to sleep on the ground.
12. The longest animal is not the blue whale or the lion’s mane jellyfish but the bootlace worm (Lineus longissimus ), a little under two hundred feet, making it almost twice as long as a blue whale and a third longer than the longest lion’s mane jellyfish.
13. Most guinea pigs are used as food. Although guinea pigs are almost never used for vivisection nowadays, tens of millions of guinea pigs are eaten each year by Peruvians. Further, residents of Colombia, Bolivia, and Ecuador also eat them. Possibly 90 percent of lab animals are mice and rats; more rabbits and chickens are used as “guinea pigs” than are guinea pigs.
14. Most tigers live in the United States. Although there were tens of thousands of tigers in India a century ago, there are only a few thousand today. Some scientists estimate that there are fewer than ten thousand wild tigers on the planet. Note there are thought to be four thousand tigers living in captivity in Texas alone. What’s more, the American Zoo and Aquarium Association estimates that possibly as many as twelve thousand tigers are illegally being kept as private pets in the United States. Although many zoos have tigers, people may legally own tigers in some states, such as Delaware, Maine, Indiana, and Idaho.
15. A sea cucumber is a marine animal, related to both the sea urchin and starfish.
16. Ornithologically, there is no major difference between pigeons and doves, though the larger birds tend to be called pigeons, and the smaller ones tend to be called doves.
17. Dogs do most of their sweating not from their tongues but from the soles of their paws.
18. Your brain is pink when it’s alive. The pink comes from blood vessels. The human brain, if deprived of fresh oxygenated blood, will appear gray. Although about 40 percent of the living brain is composed of gray matter, and about 60 percent is composed of white matter, those terms aren’t accurate descriptions of colors, though they do designate tissue of two different kinds.
19. According to evolutionary theory, human beings did not descend from either apes or monkeys but from a common ancestor of apes and human beings.
20. Of the properties listed, the only one not possessed by all mammals is that of bearing live young. Although nearly all mammals bear live young, monotremes, such as the platypus and echidna (a spiny insect-eating mammal), do not bear live young but lay eggs.
21. The bird that lays the lightest eggs relative to its weight is the ostrich, which, though it has the largest single egg in nature, produces an egg less than 1.5 percent of its weight. Although a wren, for example, is tiny compared to an ostrich, its egg, in contrast, constitutes about 13 percent of its weight.
22. Numbering more than fifty billion, chickens are by far the most common bird and, not coincidentally, the bird most
commonly eaten by people. For almost three thousand years, people did not eat chickens but farmed them primarily for their eggs. Until the Romans came to Britain, people saw chickens as egg-providers rather than as meat. Chickens are thought to have descended from a pheasant native to Thailand called the red jungle fowl. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, chickens came to be mass produced. They were produced first for their eggs but were killed for meat when they were too old to produce enough eggs.
23. Beavers do not use their tails to tamp down the mud in their dams but use their teeth and claws. A beaver can use its tail and its hind legs together to stand upright, and it uses its tail as a rudder for swimming and as a warning device by slapping it on the water’s surface.
24. Polar bears kept in warm, humid conditions often turn pale green—because of the algae on their guard hairs.
25. An earthworm, when cut in half, won’t become two worms. It can survive being bisected, but the part that survives will be the front end, where the mouth is. In contrast, members of the genus Planaria, or flatworms, do become two distinct creatures when bisected or split down the middle.
26. In a quarter-mile race between an ostrich and a whippet, the winner would probably be the ostrich, which can reach, according to InfoPlease.com, about 40 miles per hour, whereas the whippet can reach about 35.5 miles per hour.
27. Dolphins don’t drink but extract all the water they need from consuming food (mainly fish and squid) and burning their body fat, which releases water. If dolphins drank saltwater, they would upset their electrolyte balance and die.
28. Mice, giraffes, whales, and human beings all have the same number of neck bones—seven. In fact, according to current knowledge, only two mammals have a different number: a manatee has six, and a sloth has six (if it is a two-toed sloth) or nine (if it is a three-toed sloth).
29. The favorite food of mice is not cheese, but any number of things, including peanut butter, oats, fruits, vegetables, worms, and spiders. People who set mouse-traps say that cheese quickly dries up and is, for that reason, less desirable bait than peanut butter.
30. After a sea cucumber expels its vital organs in response to an attack, it grows a new set.
31. A Thoroughbred (with an upper case T) is the name for a breed of horse, like Clydesdale or Arabian. Thoroughbred racing horses are descended from three Middle Eastern stallions (two Arabians and a Turk) that were taken to England in the seventeenth century to be mated with British mares.
32. The normal human body temperature in degrees Fahrenheit is not 98.6, since the body temperature of a healthy person will fluctuate during the day and from day to day. People will commonly have temperatures of about 99°F in the afternoon and 97°F during sleep. Further, a woman’s body temperature can vary according to what part of her menstrual cycle she is. “Normal” body temperature was first defined as somewhere between 98°F and 99°F. Because thermometers were calibrated by fifths of degrees, 98.6 was chosen as normal.
33. Flamingos are pink because their diet often includes carotene-containing brine shrimp and blue-green algae.
34. Most salmon, from Canada to Australia and from Siberia to Scandinavia, do not die after spawning. The exception is the kind known as Pacific salmon, located along the west coast of North America.
35. Opossums do not play dead if one means that they voluntarily pretend to be dead. Rather, when opossums are threatened, they involuntarily fall into a catatonic state that’s convincing to their would-be attackers. The opossum’s eyes glaze over; their lips pull back, baring teeth, and saliva foams around the edges of the mouth. The tongue, furthermore, falls to the side, and the body stiffens, becoming insensitive to touch for several minutes or even hours.
36. Grizzly bears are so called not because they are grisly—that is, horrifying or gruesomely unpleasant—but because of their grizzled or gray hairs. It is true, however, that its scientific name, Ursus arctos horribilis, is based on a misunderstanding of naturalist George Ord, who formally named the bear in 1815 and misunderstood grizzly as “grisly,” producing its biological Latin specific, or subspecific, name horribilis (“ horrible”).
37. Horseshoe crabs are not crabs but arthropods, more closely related to spiders, ticks, and scorpions than to crabs, which are crustaceans.
38. The mammal with the most teeth is a dolphin, which can have up to 260 of them. Despite those teeth, dolphins swallow prey whole and use their teeth only to grasp their food.
39. Male sharks are bulls.
40. Female sharks are females.
41. Female chimps are females.
42. Porcupines do not shoot their quills, which sometimes fall off; instead, when porcupines are frightened, their quills rise up to protect the animal from any perceived threats.
43. Although penguins (such as the emperor penguin) live in the bitter cold of Antarctica, other penguins live in colonies near the equator on the Galápagos Islands of Fernandina and Isabella, where the average temperature is between 67°F and 88°F. Some penguins live on the temperate southwest coast of South Africa, forty-some miles east of Capetown, where the average temperature is between 50°F and 70°F. Further, the Magellanic Penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus ) breeds in coastal Argentina and Chile and in the Falkland Islands, with some migrating to Brazil. One of their largest colonies is in Punta Tombo, Argentina, where the average temperature is between 45°F and 65°F.
44. Bulls are uncastrated male cattle; oxen, in contrast, are castrated male cattle, especially those that are used as draft animals. (Steers and oxen are the same animals, though the word steer is usually applied to animals raised for beef.)
45. Sardines are not fish of one particular type; instead, they are canned fish of different species, though most commonly they are either young herring or pilchard. The juvenile Atlantic herring has also been used in a few places, such as Maine. Sardines are packed like sardines because the oil in which they are packed is often more costly than the fish.
46. Given that a bird’s sense of smell is not particularly good, and that your scent wouldn’t bother it, handling a young bird would not cause the bird to be rejected by its parents. Nonetheless, fledglings (young birds with feathers that are learning to fly) need to spend several days on the ground until they acquire the ability to use their wings for flight. Normally, the parents watch over the fledglings and fetch them food. You should usually leave fledglings alone so that you will not interrupt their development toward independence. Nestlings, which are fuzzy or featherless, should be placed back in their nests, if their nests can be found.
47. Unlike human beings, lemmings do not intentionally kill themselves. The 1958 Disney film Wild Wilderness presented footage that appeared to be lemming suicide. Yes, lemmings can be seen falling off cliffs, but they are frantically looking for food; food, as it turns out, becomes scarce when the lemming population explodes, as it does every few years in some Scandinavian habitats. In a mad rush for food, some lemmings successfully swim across lakes and streams and find food on the other side, but some, pushed by the hordes behind them, fall off cliffs into the sea and drown.
48. The largest fish is not a blue whale, which is a mammal, but the whale shark, a fish that often grows to a length of 40 feet or more and weighs over 30,000 pounds. In fact, the biggest fish ever caught was a whale shark that was fifty-nine feet long and weighed 90,000 pounds. Harmless to people, the whale shark eats only plankton. Note that the largest man-eating shark, the great white shark, is much smaller (20 to 25 feet in length) and weighs about 7,000 pounds.
49. Although opossums climb with their prehensile tails, they do not hang from them.
50. Although sharks of many species need to swim to breathe, other sharks can lie on the bottom and pump water over their gills to breathe.
Quiz 3
The Bible and Religion
1. According to the Bible, why were Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden of Eden?
2. According to the Bible, what sort of creature swallowed Jonah?
4. In the Bible, who is called Lucifer?
5. According to the Bible, what is the root of all evil?
6. What means of transportation did the wise men use when they came to visit Jesus?
7. According to the Bible, how old was Jesus when the wise men visited him?
8. How many goats were on Noah’s Ark?
9. According to the Bible, how many wise men visited Jesus?
10. Where in the Bible is gambling specifically condemned?
11. According to the Bible, what did Mary Magdalene do for a living?
12. According to the Bible, what did God say to Cain after Cain asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
13. According to the Bible, how many times did Moses climb Mt. Sinai?
14. What makes a church a cathedral?
15. What is the Day of Doom?
16. Are Catholic priests allowed to be married?
17. Where will you find the statement “God helps those who help themselves”?
18. What role did Emperor Constantine play in establishing the New Testament canon—that is, the list of books regarded as authentic and authoritative Christian Scripture?
19. Why is the saddest and most solemn day in the Christian year, which commemorates the death of Jesus, called Good Friday?
20. Did Albert Einstein believe in a personal God, or was he an atheist?
21. What country gave as a gift the Spanish Steps in Rome?
22. What did early Christians do in Roman catacombs?
Quiz 3 Answers
The Bible and Religion
1. Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden not to punish them for eating the forbidden fruit but to prevent them eating from the Tree of Life and becoming immortal like God (Genesis 3:22-23).