Fun with Quizzes

Are you a Cetacean expert?

Instructions
To pass the test you must answer correctly at least 7 questions out of 10. For each question, one or more answers can be correct and you need to select all the correct options to score a point. Test evaluation is immediate and does not require you to provide any personal data.

1.

Herman Melville's white whale in the novel Moby Dick was actually:

A Great White Shark

A Whale Shark

A Sperm whale

A Blue whale

2.

All cetaceans are:

Warm-blooded mammals

Air-breathing animals

Filter feeders

Fish eaters

3.

The so-called melon in Odontoceti plays a crucial role in:

Focusing the sounds used in echolocation

Excreting

Feeding

Mating

4.

Talking about evolution, the reason(s) why Cetaceans have almost completely lost their body hair since the time they were land mammals is (are):

Life in the ocean is so psychologically stressful

A fur is not as effective to keep a body warm in the water as it is on land

To increase streamlining

To avoid looking like seals and being hunted

5.

Which of the following animals are not cetaceans?

Dugong

Manatee

Sperm whale

Beluga

6.

Why is a stranded cetacean in a highly life-threatening condition?

Because it cannot breathe

Because its body design was not conceived by Nature to fully cope with gravity out of the water

Because it cannot efficiently dissipate heat on land (overheating)

Because it quickly gets dehydrated and its skin is also sensitive to the ultraviolet radiations of the sun

7.

The number of blowholes in Odontoceti is:

Two

One or two, depending on the species

One

Always one, except the Sperm whale which has two

8.

Porpoises have the following distinctive features:

Lack of beak

Lack of blowhole

Spade-shaped teeth

They belong to the Phocoenidae family

9.

Strandings of cetaceans can be caused by:

Military sonar systems

Infections and other diseases

Local changes of the Earth's magnetic field

Ancestral desire of cetaceans to come back to land

10.

The Mexican bays and lagoons of San Ignacio, Guerrero Negro and Magdalena are world-famous breeding grounds for:

Humpback whales

Blue whales

Sperm whales

Gray whales