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Bear with me

March 04, 2013 03:53 pm | Updated 05:21 pm IST

The sloth bear is a tricky fellow. Here he is with yet another quiz!

Hi Friends,

Guess who is back? Your favourite savant quizmaster to throw questions at you that will stimulate your brains!

I have a whale of a quiz as always but this time it is about those enormous marine creatures!

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Let’s go!

1. Cetacean, Order of large marine animals, comes from a Greek word meaning

a. Sea monsters; b. Large mountain-dwelling creatures

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2. Cetaceans can be divided into two groups or two suborders, namely,

a. Baleen and toothed whales; b. Balloons and tooth fairies

3. Members of this large group of over 80 species of marine mammals are

a. Tortoises, porpoises and slow loris; b. Whales, dolphins and porpoises

4. Baleen whales are some of the largest animals on the planet, yet they feed on

a. Tiny zoo planktons and krill; b. Tons of plants and dill pickles

5. Blue whales are the largest of all creatures on Earth ever. They reach

a. 100 feet in length and 100,000 kg in weight; b. 100 inches and 100,000 mg

6. Baleen whales have no teeth. Instead, they have numerous baleen plates pointing downwards from their upper jaw. These plates have bristles on them to help the whale to

a. Breathe; b. Strain food from the water they gulp in

7. Toothed whales are so called because they have

a. Just one tooth; b. Twenty or more pairs of conical or flattened teeth to help them feed on squid and fish

8. Dolphins and porpoises are toothed whales. There are also six medium-sized cetaceans which are black in colour and have teeth. The best known ones are

a. Black panther and black bear; b. Killer and pilot whales

9. Humpback whales are so called because they

a. Have a fleshy dorsal fin on their backs that looks like a hump; b. Are cousins of dromedary camels

10. Narwhals are toothed, white whales. They have an ivory tusk on their forehead that is nearly eight feet long. They are poached for

a. Teeth and bones; b. Tusk and white hide

11. A beluga whale has an oversized rounded head just like

a. Pea-head whale; b. Melon-head whale

12. Right whales are slow-moving ones found in polar waters. They are large with a lot of fat known as blubber. They are so called because

a. They were ‘right’ for whaling; b. They always gave the right answers in a quiz (he-he.)

13. Whales are mammals, which means that

a. They are mam moth animals; b. They give birth to young ones and nurse them with milk.

14. They are warm-blooded; their body temperature is

a. Minus 99°F; b. 99°F.

15. Whales breathe through l ungs. Hence, they come to the water surface every now and then for air. The huge plume of water they release through blowholes is

a. Water-vapour in their breath; b. Seawater they have gulped down with food

16. Which species of whales are called the ‘singing’ whales?

a. Humpback; b. Do-re-me whales

17. The collective noun for whales is

a. Pod; b. I-pod (he-he.)

18. Whalebone is another name for

a. Baleen plates; b. New large I-phone

19. During polar winters, whales move to the tropics to breed and return to polar regions to feed in summers. This annual movement is called

a. Vacationing; b. Migration

20. Ganges river dolphins are blind. They move under water without any collisions. They make clicking sound that

a. Get reflected from objects around and help in echo-location of objects; b. That act as car horns to make objects move out of the way (ha-ha.)

This quiz was a good one, wasn’t it? It got you foxed!

Sloth bear

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