Is it true there’s no such thing as a seagull? Try our kids’ quiz

Illustration: Hennie Haworth/The Guardian

1. Alma, 7, asks: is it true there’s no such thing as a seagull?

   1. Of course there are seagulls

   2. You’ll see seagulls at the beach in England but nowhere else

   3. It is true – there is no such thing as a seagull

   4. There used to be a breed of bird called a seagull – they’re extinct now but people still use the name by mistake for birds that aren’t seagulls

2. George, 4, asks: who invented paper and how did they do it?

   1. Paper was invented in China and they used hemp soaked in water

   2. Paper was invented in England and they used trees to make it

   3. Paper was invented in Indonesia and they used bamboo to make it

   4. Paper was invented in the Galapagos Islands and made from leaves

3. Edith, 8, asks: what is the biggest animal that has ever lived?

   1. T rex

   2. Blue whale

   3. Woolly mammoth

   4. Megalodon

4. Evie, 5, asks: what is the diameter of the sun?

   1. 100,000 km

   2. About 1.392m km

   3. About 3.2m km

   4. About 5m km

5. Adam, 7, asks: how long is the biggest stick insect?

   1. 10cm

   2. 35cm

   3. 53cm

   4. 89cm

Solutions

1:C - The birds you think are seagulls are actually lots of different species of gull. In the UK, these include Black-headed, Common, Great Black-backed, Glaucous, Herring, Kittiwake, Iceland, Little, Mediterranean, Lesser Black-backed and Yellow-legged gulls. Lots of them live inland for some of the year as well as by the sea., 2:A - Paper was first made in China in about AD105, when an imperial court official created a sheet of it using mulberry and other fibres from plants, along with fishnets, old rags and hemp waste., 3:B - Blue whales are the biggest animals that have ever lived on Earth. An adult can be 30 metres long and weigh more than 180,000kg – the same as 40 elephants, 30 T rexes or 2,670 men., 4:B - The sun is about 1.392m km in diameter. It is the largest object in the solar system. You could line 109 Earths across its face., 5:C - The biggest stick insect is Phobaeticus kirbyi of Borneo. It is over 53cm long with its legs stretched out, and is one of the world’s largest insects.

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.

Does your child have a question? Submit one here