How can tuna swim so fast and when did people start dancing? Try our kids’ quiz

1. Idris, 7, asks: how can tuna swim so fast when they are so big?

   1. Their streamlined, torpedo-shaped bodies

   2. Their powerful tails

   3. Their strong muscles

   4. All the above

2. Stanley, 7, asks: can hedgehogs swim?

   1. No – hedgehogs have to stick to dry land

   2. Hedgehogs would like to be able to swim but their spikes would pop their armbands

   3. Yes! Hedgehogs are good swimmers

   4. Hedgehogs occasionally take a dip but don’t enjoy wetting their spikes

3. Emma, 5½, asks: how many active volcanoes are there in the world?

   1. About 1,500

   2. About 150

   3. About 15,000

   4. About 15

4. Nic, 9, and Susie, 4, ask: when did people first start dancing?

   1. The Aztecs in central Mexico were the first people to dance, in or soon after the year 1300

   2. The Romans were the first dancers, in about 500BC

   3. People were dancing at least 10,000 years ago, and possibly even before

   4. The Victorians started using their bodies for dance in the 1850s

5. Celeste, 8, asks: in Tudor times, what was used to make poor people’s houses?

   1. They were built from glass and steel

   2. They were made out of bricks and cement

   3. They were built from wood, mud and animal dung

   4. They were mainly made out of concrete

Solutions

1:D - All the above. Some tuna can swim up to 15 metres a second in short bursts. This is because of their strong muscles, powerful tails and torpedo-shaped bodies, which even have special pockets to tuck their fins into when they’re going fast!, 2:C - Yes, they can run and swim up to 2km a night in search of food., 3:A - There are about 1,500 active volcanoes in the world today. Most of these are found in the Pacific Ring of Fire, the shoreline of the Pacific Ocean. Iceland has the most volcanoes in Europe – it has 32. , 4:C - There are cave paintings in India that show people dancing – these are about 10,000 years old! Egyptian tomb paintings from 3300BC also show dancers, so humans have been dancing for a long time., 5:C - Poor people’s houses in Tudor England were made of wooden frames, filled out with a mixture of clay, mud and animal dung. This technique was called “wattle and daub”, wattle referring to the wooden sticks in between posts and daub referring to the filler that was smeared over the wattle to make the wall.

Scores

1. 5 and above.

2. 4 and above.

3. 3 and above.

4. 2 and above.

5. 0 and above.

6. 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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