What’s the difference between a turtle and a tortoise, and how big is the moon? Try our kids’ quiz

Tortoise … or turtle? Illustration: Hennie Haworth/The Guardian

1. Look at the drawing above, of a tortoise – or is it a turtle? Come to think of it, what is the difference between a turtle and a tortoise?

   1. Only one lives in the sea

   2. Only one has teeth

   3. Only one lays eggs

   4. They are the same

2. Samuel, 8, asks: how many spikes does a hedgehog have on its back?

   1. About 125

   2. Babies have 50 and adults have about 1,000

   3. Between 5,000 and 7,000

   4. 20,000 on average

3. Why is there a queen bee?

   1. The bees need a queen to rule them

   2. She lays eggs for the hive

   3. She takes care of all the female bees

   4. She visits other hives to find out what they’re up to

4. How big is the moon in terms of surface area?

   1. 12.9m sq miles (33.4m sq km) – a bit more than Africa

   2. 13.5m sq miles (35.0m sq km) or about twice the size of South America

   3. We can’t measure it as it is too big

   4. 14.6m sq miles (37.8m sq km) or less than North and South America combined

5. Who invented chocolate?

   1. The Olmec people

   2. A sweetshop owner in New York City

   3. William Cadbury

   4. Ruth Wakefield

6. Kurt, 7, asks: what is the tallest building on Earth?

   1. CN Tower in Toronto, Canada

   2. Shanghai Tower in China

   3. Burj Khalifa in Dubai

   4. Empire State Building in New York City

Solutions

1:A - Tortoises only live on land, and turtles spend most of their lives in the water. You can tell them apart by looking at their feet. Tortoise feet look like tiny elephant feet, and turtles mostly have webbed feet, except sea turtles which have flippers, so this drawing is of a tortoise., 2:C - Each spike is about 25mm long. Hedgehogs have fur on their face, chest, tummy, throat and legs, and they have a little tail. , 3:B - The queen is usually the only bee in the hive that lays eggs, so is very important. When she can no longer lay eggs, the worker bees raise a new queen, who starts off as an egg like any other bee, but is fed only bee milk, or “royal jelly”, making her a queen., 4:D - The surface area of the moon is about 14.6m sq miles. If the moon and Earth were balls, the Earth would be a basketball and the moon would be a tennis ball., 5:A - The Olmec people, who lived in what is now Mexico, probably invented chocolate, using the seeds (beans) of a little tree called the cacao., 6:C - Completed in 2010, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai has 163 floors and is 828 metres high.

Scores

1. 6 and above.

2. 5 and above.

3. 4 and above.

4. 3 and above.

5. 2 and above.

6. 0 and above.

7. 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