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.

Talking about the ability of some cetaceans to make sounds and process the echoes bouncing back:

Echolocating cetaceans can recognise a woman being pregnant and may be therefore particularly careful and cautious in her presence

Echolocating cetaceans can see air in our lungs and therefore understand we cannot breathe underwater

Being echolocated by a cetacean is a guarantee the animal will not bump into you by mistake

Echolocation is the use of sound (and relative echoes) to locate objects, estimate their distance, shape and density

2.

Which species among the following has disappeared from the North Atlantic due to whaling?

Gray whale

Narwhal

Common dolphin

Vaquita

3.

Which of the following assertions about the Sperm whale are true?

Its blow is unique in being projected forward and on the left

It belongs to the suborder Odontoceti

It can dive as deep as 2000 metres (6000 feet)

There is an organ in its head called Spermaceti, containing huge amounts of a waxy substance (which has nothing to do with sperm, though)

4.

Who is the current record holder for deep diving among Marine Mammals?

Blue whale

Sperm whale

Elephant Seal

Cuvier's beaked whale

5.

Porpoises have the following distinctive features:

Lack of beak

Lack of blowhole

Spade-shaped teeth

They belong to the Phocoenidae family

6.

The English name for Tursiops truncatus is:

Hector's dolphin

Northern Bottlenose whale

Common dolphin

None of the above

7.

Which of the following baleen whales are unmistakable because of their typical V-shaped blow?

Gray whale

Right whale

Minke whale

Humpback whale

8.

The Whale Shark is a shark, not a whale. It follows that:

It is not a mammal

It is a fish

It is not an air breather

It does not suckle its young

9.

The so-called baleen in toothless whales (Mysticeti) serve the purpose of:

Filtering the water and retain food

Filtering the oxygen contained in the water

Chewing preys

Increasing streamlining

10.

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