Natural history

1. Which bird lays the biggest egg?
2. Which species of fish lives at the highest altitude?
3. To which group of reptiles do caimans belong?
4. The flower of a plant such as a daisy is in fact made up of many tiny individual flowers called florets. Plants which have heads of this type also include dandelions, marigolds and sunflowers; together they form a family called the Compositae. True/false?
5. Name the animal which spends most of its life hanging upside down.
6. Do snail shells coil to the left or to the right?
7. The spores of some fungi have been found floating as high as 11,000 cm (36,000 ft). True/false?
8. To which group of invertebrate does the scorpion belong?
9. Do any animals eat termites?
10. Which is the world's smallest monkey?

[Answers]

1. The ostrich. An average egg measures 15 x 14 cm (16 x 5 1/4 in) and weighs 1.6 kg (3 lbs 10 oz.). The shell which is very thick can support the weight of a man.
2. The Tibetan loach. The fish is found in water at an altitude of 5,200 m (17,060 ft) in the Himalayan mountains.
3. Caimans belong to the group called the crocodilians, which includes the crocodile, alligator and gharial.
4. True.
5. The sloth that lives in the forests of South America.
6. Most snails have a right-handed spiral and its called a dextral spiral. A few however, have a left handed spiral which is called a sinistral spiral.
7. True.
8. Scorpions are members of the Arachinda group which includes spiders.
9. The giant ant eater of South America is a particularly important predator of termites. ome birds also eat termites occasionally.
10. The pygmy marmoset. It is only 12 cm (5 1/2 in.) long and weighs a mere 70 g (2 1/2 oz.).