Life at the Poles

What this quiz asks

• What colour is a polar bear's skin underneath its fur?
• Which is the largest living species of penguin?
• Most Arctic foxes wear a white coat in winter and a brown or grey one in summer.
• When wolves threaten a herd, adult musk oxen usually do what?
• Antarctic krill, the food of whales, seals and penguins, are what kind of animal?
• Which Antarctic seal is named after a big cat because of its spotted coat, and hunts penguins at the ice edge?
• The polar bear's scientific name, Ursus maritimus, means what?
• Do all polar bears spend the winter asleep in snow dens?
• Walruses use their long tusks for fighting and for what else?
• Select ALL of these animals that live in the Arctic.
• How do penguins and Arctic foxes stop their feet losing too much heat to the ice?
• Belugas, narwhals and bowhead whales all lack which body part, which makes swimming under sea ice easier?
• Order these polar animals by typical adult weight, from lightest to heaviest.
• Reindeer eyes change colour with the seasons. What colour do they turn in the dark Arctic winter?
• Select ALL of these features that help a polar bear keep warm.
• Which is the largest of all seals, sea lions and walruses, with males weighing up to about 4 tonnes?
• How do Weddell seals keep their breathing holes in the sea ice open through the Antarctic winter?
• In 2008 a tracked female polar bear swam nonstop across the Beaufort Sea. Roughly how many kilometres did she cover?
• Adult Antarctic icefish are the only backboned animals known to have blood without which substance?
• A flightless midge only a few millimetres long is the largest animal that lives its whole life on land in Antarctica.