Can slugs hear, and how old do vultures live to? Try our kids’ quiz

Illustration: Hennie Haworth/The Guardian

1. Axel, 5, asks: can slugs (like the one pictured above) hear?

   1. They have great hearing

   2. Some species can hear, others cannot

   3. Slugs don’t have ears, so they can’t hear sound

   4. Their antennae are ears

2. Nora, 7, asks: why is a funny bone called that?

   1. Because you laugh if someone tickles it

   2. Because it isn’t a bone

   3. Its proper name is the humerus, which sounds like the word “humorous”, meaning funny

   4. If you touch that bone, it helps you think up jokes

3. Ella, 11, asks: why is the moon out in the day?

   1. It’s always there, but you don’t always notice it

   2. The moon goes round the sun every 27.3 days; on some of those it’s on the side of the Earth that faces the sun, so we can see it in the day

   3. It’s only out in the day when you haven’t had enough sleep

   4. The moon is out in the day once a month

4. Arlo, 5, asks: how old do vultures live to?

   1. Around 5 years

   2. Up to 100 years

   3. Between 10 and 47 years, depending on the species

   4. The oldest ever was 198

5. Agatha, 9, asks: which way does water go down the plughole?

   1. It can go both ways

   2. It goes clockwise on one side of the world and anticlockwise on the other

   3. It depends on the temperature of the water

   4. If you have bubble bath in it, the water goes clockwise

Solutions

1:C - Slugs don’t have ears, so they can’t hear sound. They sense their environment through smell, taste, sight and touch. They also have little liquid-filled organs, called statocysts, to help them work out which way is up and which down – handy if they’re crawling on the bottom of a leaf or up a tree., 2:C - Funny bone is another name for the upper arm bone called the humerus. In English, people use the name as a little joke, because “humerus” sounds like “humorous”, meaning funny., 3:B - The moon can be around in the day or night. It goes round the Earth, completing one full loop every 27.3 days. When it’s on the side of the Earth that faces the sun, we can see it in the day; when it’s on the side away from the sun, we see it only at night., 4:C - There are 22 species of vulture and they all live for different amounts of time. The most common is the black vulture which lives for around 10 years in the wild., 5:A - Water can go down both ways: give it a push when the bath is emptying and you’ll see. Things that affect it include the shape of your bath and any currents from when you got out.

Scores

1. 4 and above.

2. 3 and above.

3. 2 and above.

4. 0 and above.

5. 1 and above.

Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a weekly podcast answering children’s questions, out now as a book.

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