The animal kingdom is full of facts that sound made up but are not. How many of them do you actually know?
Did you know a group of flamingos is called a flamboyance? There is more where that came from. Ten questions on the animal kingdom that will test and entertain you in equal measure.
Pick your level
The animal kingdom is full of facts that sound invented and turn out to be true. The normal quiz covers the ones most wildlife documentaries get round to eventually: speed records, extra hearts, marathon pregnancies, mammals that lay eggs and the heaviest brain on the planet.
Hard mode digs further. It asks about the strange words English uses for groups of animals, a few pieces of anatomy that seem designed as jokes, and some popular animal facts that turn out to be myths. Five out of ten is a very good score.
English has a collective noun for almost every animal, many of them dating back to medieval hunting manuals. A flock of sheep and a school of fish are everyday phrases, a crash of rhinoceroses and a tower of giraffes much less so. Some were probably invented for fun and never used by anyone outside a book, but they have stuck around all the same.
The internet is full of animal trivia that has been repeated so often it feels true. Some of it is, and some of it quietly is not. Where a popular claim does not hold up, hard mode says so, and the explanations give the version scientists accept today.
All ten easy level questions, with the answer and the reasoning behind it.
Correct answer: A puppy
A puppy. Cubs are young bears and lions, and foals are young horses.
Correct answer: Australia
Australia, along with New Guinea for some close relatives.
Correct answer: Black and white
Black and white, and no two zebras have the same pattern.
Correct answer: The Arctic
The Arctic. Penguins live in the south, so the two never meet outside a zoo.
Correct answer: At night
At night, mostly, helped by excellent hearing and silent wings.
Correct answer: Gills
Gills, which pull oxygen from the water.
Correct answer: A trunk
A trunk, used for breathing, drinking, grabbing and greeting. Tusks are teeth.
Correct answer: The tiger
The tiger, with Siberian males reaching about 300 kilos.
Correct answer: In a hive
In a hive, which can hold tens of thousands of bees in summer.
Correct answer: Eucalyptus leaves
Eucalyptus leaves. They are low in nutrients, which is partly why koalas sleep so much.
Want to warm up before playing or double-check something? Open any question to reveal the correct answer and a short explanation.
Correct answer: The cheetah
The cheetah can reach 110 km/h in a sprint. It is the fastest over short distances but tires quickly. The pronghorn antelope, by contrast, sustains high speeds for far longer.
Correct answer: 3
An octopus has 3 hearts: two branchial hearts that pump blood to the gills and one systemic heart that distributes it to the rest of the body. Its blood is blue, rich in haemocyanin (copper-based).
Correct answer: The African elephant
The African elephant is the largest land animal, weighing up to 6 tonnes and standing 3.3 metres at the shoulder. It also has the largest brain of any land animal.
Correct answer: The bat
Bats are the only mammals capable of true, sustained powered flight. Flying squirrels only glide. There are over 1,400 bat species, accounting for roughly 20 % of all mammal species.
Correct answer: 8
Spiders have 8 legs, which distinguishes them from insects (6 legs). They belong to the class Arachnida, along with scorpions, mites and harvestmen.
Correct answer: 22 months
The African elephant has a gestation period of around 22 months, nearly two years. It is the longest of any land mammal. Calves are born highly developed and can walk almost immediately.
Correct answer: The platypus and the echidna
The platypus and the four species of echidna are the only egg-laying mammals. These animals form the order Monotremata, a very ancient group that retained this mode of reproduction.
Correct answer: The ostrich
The ostrich is the world's tallest bird, reaching up to 2.7 m in height and weighing as much as 156 kg. It cannot fly but runs at over 70 km/h. Its eggs are the largest of any living bird.
Correct answer: The sperm whale
The sperm whale has the largest brain of any animal on Earth, weighing up to 8 kg. It is also the world's largest toothed predator and dives beyond 2,000 metres to hunt giant squid.
Correct answer: The ant
The ant, which can carry between 10 and 50 times its own weight depending on the species. Scaled up to a 70 kg human, that would be several tonnes. Part of the secret is size itself: the smaller an animal, the stronger its muscles are relative to its body mass.
Stuck on one, or just curious how nasty it gets? Every hard mode question is here with its answer and the reasoning behind it.
Correct answer: A murder
A murder, a name that goes back to 15th-century books of hunting terms, probably inspired by crows gathering around battlefields and gallows. A parliament is a group of owls, a gaggle a group of geese on the ground and a pride a group of lions.
Correct answer: No, it is white and the pink story is a myth
No. Hippos secrete a reddish-orange fluid from their skin that acts as a sunscreen and antiseptic, which is where the myth comes from, but it has nothing to do with their milk, which is white like any other mammal's.
Correct answer: The cuckoo
The common cuckoo. The female lays a single egg in the nest of a smaller species, often matching the host's egg colour, and the cuckoo chick pushes the other eggs out soon after hatching. The foster parents go on feeding it even when it dwarfs them.
Correct answer: The sea otter
The sea otter, with up to around a million hairs per square inch. Unlike seals and whales, it has no layer of blubber, so it relies entirely on the air trapped in its fur to stay warm in cold Pacific waters. The chinchilla holds the record among land animals.
Correct answer: The colossal squid
The colossal squid, with eyes around 27 centimetres across, roughly the size of a football. They probably help it spot the faint glow of sperm whales approaching in the deep. The ostrich has the largest eyes of any land animal, bigger than its own brain.
Correct answer: Cube-shaped
Cubes. A 2018 study found that the last stretch of a wombat's intestine has sections of different stiffness that shape the faeces as they dry. Wombats stack them on rocks and logs to mark their territory, and the flat sides stop them rolling away.
Correct answer: A joey
A joey. It is born after about a month, no bigger than a jelly bean, and crawls into its mother's pouch, where it stays for several more months. The word joey is used for the young of other marsupials too, such as koalas and wombats.
Correct answer: They carry the eggs and give birth
They get pregnant. The female deposits her eggs in the male's brood pouch, where he fertilises and carries them for several weeks before giving birth to anything from a handful to over a thousand tiny seahorses.
Correct answer: The tardigrade
The tardigrade, or water bear. In 2007, some were exposed to open space on a European satellite mission and a number survived and later reproduced. Dried out into a dormant state, they can endure extreme cold, heat and radiation.
Correct answer: Rottnest Island, off Western Australia
Rottnest Island, near Perth, where there are no foxes or cats to hunt them. Dutch explorers took them for giant rats in the 17th century and named the island Rotte nest, rat's nest. Their permanent smile made them stars of the selfie era.