NRMjobs Quiz answers 15-Apr-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Rings’

(1) What is the science of dating past events by studying annual growth rings in trees?

Answer: Dendrochronology.

(2) What is the nest of a ringtail possum called? (bonus: where does the word originate?).

Answer: Drey. (bonus: English term for a squirrel’s nest).

(3) Platycercus elegans and Platycercus eximius were once regarded by biologists as the two ends of a classic ring species, circling the arid inland (DNA studies have since disproved this theory). What are their common names?

Answer: Crimson rosella and Eastern rosella.

CORRECTION: The quiz master withdraws the above question (3), with apologies. The answer is still ‘rosella’, but it turns out the whole ring species thing with rosellas is far more complicated, and the question is fatally flawed and incorrect.

(4) The age of a bony fish can be determined by examining the annual rings laid down in what bone-like structure in its head?

Answer: Otolith.

(5) What is an elastrator?

Answer: A device used to apply rubber rings to castrate livestock (or for docking tails etc.).

NRMjobs Quiz answers 8-Apr-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Legs’

(1) Including the pincers, how many legs does a yabby have?

Answer: 10.

(2) The word ‘centipede’ means 100 legs, and individuals can have between 30 to 354 legs, depending on the species. But do any centipedes have exactly 100 legs?

Answer: No (centipedes always have an odd number of pairs of legs).

(3) The macropod species Thylogale stigmatica is commonly called the Red-legged …?

Answer: Pademelon.

(4) What is the difference between a tetrapod and a quadruped?

Answer: A tetrapod is any species descended from a four-limbed (Tetrapoda) ancestor, while a quadruped is any species which uses four limbs for locomotion.

(5) What kind of creature can have up 750 legs – more than any other known animal?

Answer: Millipede (Illacme plenipes, native to California).

NRMjobs Quiz answers 1-Apr-2021

This week’s theme: ‘April foolery’

(1) On 1 April, 1957 the BBC’s Panorama program broadcast a now-famous ‘documentary’ featuring the harvest of what tree fruit?

Answer: Spaghetti.

(2) On 1 April, 1975 what memorable prank involved the ABC TV program This Day Tonight, the Adelaide Town Hall and SA Deputy Premier Des Corcoran?

Answer: Announcement that Australia was converting to ‘metric time’.

(3) On 1 April, 1978 what prank did Australian businessman Dick Smith play on the city of Sydney?

Answer: Towed a fake iceberg into Sydney Harbour. 

(4) On 1 April, 2003, the Sydney Morning Herald published a review of a new restaurant, called Species, which supposedly featured what on its menu?

Answer: Endangered species.

(5) On 1 April, 2013 South Australia’s Monarto Zoo announced the birth of what strange animal?

Answer: A zebracorn (zebra with a unicorn horn).

NRMjobs Quiz answers 25-Mar-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Auto-’

(1) What is an automaton?

Answer: A self-operating machine.

(2) What is autotomy?

Answer: Casting off a body part when under threat (eg lizard’s tail).

(3) What is an autotroph?

Answer: A ‘primary producer’ organism - which can produce its own food using light (usually), water, carbon dioxide, or other chemicals.

(4) What does someone who supports autogeny believe?

Answer: That living organisms can be created from non-living matter.

(5) What is a word meaning to eat or otherwise consume one’s own body?

Answer: Autophagy.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 18-Mar-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Budgies’

(1) What are budgerigars called in the US?

Answer: Parakeets.

(2) What UK celebrity wrote the children’s books series featuring ‘Budgie the Little Helicopter’?

Answer: Sarah Ferguson.

(3) Which one of the following did not have pet budgerigars? (a) Joseph Stalin (b) Adolph Hitler (c) Winston Churchill (d) John F Kennedy.

Answer: (b) Adolph Hitler.

(4) What Guinness World Record is still held by Puck, a male budgerigar which died in California in 1994?

Answer: Largest vocabulary of any bird (1,728 words).

(5) Best known for his 1970s hit ‘The Newcastle Song’, which Australian singer, broadcaster and archaeologist also recorded the comic song ‘Jonathon Livingston Budgerigar’

Answer: Dr Bob Hudson.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 11-Mar-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Worms’

(1) The world’s largest earthworm, Megascolides australis (aka karmai) can reportedly grow up to three metres long. Where in Australia would you find it?

Answer: Gippsland, Victoria.

(2) Who spent 40 years studying the role of earthworms in soil formation, and published his findings in a book titled The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms?

Answer: Charles Darwin.

(3) Where would you find the giant, fictional worm known reverentially as Shai-Hulud?

Answer: On the planet Arrakis (aka Dune).

(4) Hypolimnus pedderensis was the first species of earthworm recorded to have been sent extinct by human activities. Where did it live?

Answer: Lake Pedder, Tasmania.

(5) What is the missing word in William Blake’s famous short poem: “O Rose thou art sick / The … worm / That flies in the night / In the howling storm / Has found out thy bed / Of crimson joy / And his dark secret love / Does thy life destroy.”

Answer: Invisible.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 04-Mar-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Rattle’

(1) What happens to a rattlesnake’s tail each time it sheds its skin?

Answer: A new segment is added to the rattle.

(2) What does it mean in Australia when someone tells you to “rattle your dags”?

Answer: Hurry up.

(3) What is the common name for plants of the Crotalaria genus?

Answer: Rattlepods.

(4) What does it mean to “ride the rattler”?

Answer: Jump onto a moving freight train to avoid paying for a ticket.

(5) In what series does the fictional character mockingly known as Rattleshirt appear? (bonus: what is his own preferred name?).

Answer: Game of Thrones (bonus: Lord of Bones).

NRMjobs Quiz answers 25-Feb-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Sap’

(1) Vascular plants have two types of sap: xylem sap and phloem sap. Which one carries water from the roots up to the leaves?

Answer: Xylem sap.

(2) Which of the following is not a meaning for ‘sap’? (a) Vigour (b) To weaken (c) A club (d) A trench (e) A gullible fool (f) A small tree.

Answer: (f) A small tree.

(3) True or false: Amber is formed from fossilised tree sap?

Answer: False: Amber is formed from fossilised tree resin.

(4) What is a sapper?

Answer: A soldier responsible for tasks such as building and repairing roads and bridges, laying and clearing mines, etc.

(5) What common food product is made from the sap of the north American tree, Acer saccharum?

Answer: Maple syrup.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 18-Feb-2021

This week’s theme: ‘-icles’

(1) What are spikes of ice formed when dripping water freezes?

Answer: Icicles.

(2) What is the collective name for the three middle ear bones found in all mammals?

Answer: Ossicles.

(3) What are multi-branched clusters of flowers, especially in grasses?

Answer: Panicles.

(4) What are small secretory cavities, sacs or glands – such as the pits in the skin from which hairs grow on mammals?

Answer: Follicles.

(5) What are small, fluid filled organelles which store and transport materials within cells?

Answer: Vesicles.

NRMjobs Quiz answers 11-Feb-2021

This week’s theme: ‘Sixty’

(1) What is 60 degrees Celsius in Farenheit? (bonus: what is 60 degrees Farenheit in Celsius?)

Answer: 140 Farenheit (bonus 15.56 Celsius).

(2) Sexaginta means ‘sixty’ in what language?

Answer: Latin.

(3) How bright (in lumens) is a standard 60-watt incandescent bulb? (a) 60 lumens (b) 800 lumens (c) 10,000 lumens (d) 120,000 lumens?

Answer: (b) 800 lumens.

(4) In what year did the Australian TV program 60 Minutes first go to air in Australia?

Answer: 1979.

(5) If a triangle has two 60-degree corners, what angle is the third corner?

Answer: 60 degrees.

Bonus question: On what day was the NRMjobs quizmaster born?

Answer: 11 February, 1961 (Yep, it’s my 60th today. Hope you are enjoying the quizzes).