Why do men have nipples, and how tall can pine trees grow? Try our kids’ quiz

Illustration: Hennie Haworth/The Guardian

1. Pictured above is a nipple. Why do men have them?

   1. To shoot water out of

   2. Because they like them

   3. Just in case they need to feed babies

   4. All babies, male or female, develop them in the first six weeks of growing in a person’s tummy

2. Priya, 7, asks: why does my cat drink water from the bath or shower?

   1. Because you forgot to put out water in a bowl

   2. Cats prefer to drink running water

   3. They like the company of the person who is showering or having a bath at the same time as they are drinking

   4. So they can have a wash at the same time

3. Matthew, 10, asks: what is the highest a pine tree can grow?

   1. Over 60 metres

   2. 100 metres

   3. 20 metres

   4. 200 metres

4. Marcos, 13, asks: how far do your blood vessels stretch?

   1. As far as from London to Brighton

   2. As far as from London to New York

   3. From London, all the way around the Earth 2.4 times

   4. As far as from London to the moon

5. Abigail, 7, asks: how many grains of sand are there on Earth?

   1. 7 quintillion, 500 quadrillion grains

   2. 1 billion, million, trillion

   3. It is impossible to count

   4. 41 quadrillion

Solutions

1:D - Most male mammals have nipples, though they can’t make milk. For about six weeks when babies start to grow, they all look the same. Then the ones that are going to be male start to change, but the nipples are already there., 2:B - Cats are descended from wild desert animals that had little water, so if they see it, they drink it. They prefer running water because they can’t see still water well (but can hear it), they might worry another cat will attack them for the water if their bowl is in a corner, and they have an instinct that tells them still water might have been there for ages and gone off. , 3:A - Sugar pines, called the King of Pines, are the tallest. They grow in North America, can reach 60 metres – 30 times the height of basketball player Michael Jordan – and can live for 500 years. , 4:C - Blood vessels may be tiny but they would stretch a long way. If you took all of them out of an adult and laid them in a line, they would be close to 60,000 miles long., 5:A - Researchers in Hawaii worked out the average size of a grain of sand, then how many grains in a teaspoon, then multiplied by all the beaches and deserts on Earth!

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