World Penguin Day quiz: test your knowledge of our flightless friends

Penguins! On World Penguin Day! Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

It is World Penguin Day, so what better way to celebrate than to test your knowledge of penguins, and their appearances in history and popular culture, while also looking at pictures of penguins? You might even learn something along the way.

World Penguin Day quiz

1. 

   Penguins are only found in the wild in the southern hemisphere. True or false?

   1. True

   2. False

2. 

   How fast can the Gentoo penguin swim underwater?

   1. 14km/h

   2. 18km/h

   3. 24km/h

   4. 36km/h

3. 

   Which villainous penguin featured in the Wallace and Gromit animations?

   1. Frobisher

   2. Feathers McGraw

   3. Penny Penguin

   4. Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot

4. 

   These penguins, appearing to take a selfie, belong to the largest species of penguin. What are they called?

   1. Emperor

   2. Imperial

   3. Empoleon

   4. King

5. 

   Can penguins drink salty sea water?

   1. No

   2. Yes

6. 

   Who played the Penguin in the 1989 movie Batman Returns?

   1. Burgess Meredith

   2. Joe Pesci

   3. Danny DeVito

   4. Rick Moranis

7. 

   How many species of penguin are there?

   1. 12

   2. 15

   3. 17

   4. 18

8. 

   Which long-lived and famous rock band released an album, their seventh, entitled Penguin in 1973?

   1. Fleetwood Mac

   2. The Moody Blues

   3. Pink Floyd

   4. The Hollies

9. 

   In 2012 a scientific project measured the size of the Emperor penguin population in the antarctic, by measuring the size of the poo stains left on the ice by their breeding colonies, using pictures taken from space. True or false?

   1. True

   2. False

10. 

    Who is second-in-command to Skipper in the Penguins of Madagascar?

    1. Rico

    2. Private

    3. Sonny

    4. Kowalski

11. 

    One of the first recorded European encounters with penguins was during Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe in 1520. How did they describe the birds?

    1. Flightless geese

    2. Upright angry ducks

    3. Strange geese

    4. Feathered seals

12. 

    Female emperor penguins lay one egg, which is then incubated by the male while she goes off hunting. How long is she away for?

    1. 12 weeks

    2. 9 weeks

    3. 6 weeks

    4. 4 weeks

13. 

    Everybody loves Pingu. But what was the name of the seal he was friends with?

    1. Robbie

    2. Robin

    3. Roberta

    4. Robina

14. 

    Oliver Jeffers wrote a popular children's book about a penguin who finds himself on the wrong side of the world. But what was it called?

    1. A Bit Lost

    2. The Lost Penguin

    3. All At Sea

    4. Lost And Found

15. 

    What is the name of this penguin-based Pokémon?

    1. Popplio

    2. Piplup

    3. Empoleon

    4. Prinplup

16. 

    This is a picture of Dirk, a fairy penguin from Australia. How did he make the news in 2012?

    1. He attacked Prince Charles while he was on a royal visit to Australia

    2. He was rescued after being stolen from an aquarium by drunk British backpackers

    3. He was the first fairy penguin to be born in captivity in Australia

    4. He had unusual markings for a fairy penguin, which are usually almost totally white

Solutions

1:A - It's true. Just about. The ones that live on the Galapagos Islands might stray a bit into the northern hemisphere. But if you ever see a polar bear and a penguin together, one of them is very lost. As well as Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands, penguins also live in Australia, South America and Southern Africa. , 2:D - Yes, Gentoo can go at a whopping 36km/hph beneath the waves. They can also, apparently, out-run humans over short distances, although we haven't tried this ourselves., 3:B - It was Feathers McGraw, enabled in his crime spree by his cunning disguise as a chicken. Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot is the real name of the Penguin in the Batman comics. And Frobisher is a shape-changing Whifferdill stuck in the shape of a penguin, who appeared alongside the sixth and seventh Doctors in Doctor Who comics, books and audio adventures, 4:A - They can stand over 120cm tall, weigh up to 40kg, and are the only penguin to nest in the Antarctic., 5:B - They can. In fact, in some environments they inhabit, they have very little choice. The salt is filtered from their blood by a supraorbital gland located near their eyes and then secreted from their nasal passages., 6:C - Danny DeVito took the role, opposite Michael Keaton's Batman. Burgess Meredith portrayed the Penguin in the 1960s TV series Batman. Neither Pesci or Moranis have played the role, but we'd love to have seen their take on it., 7:C - There are 17 species of penguin in total. Some have several different names, which might lead people to think there are more., 8:A - Penguin was the first of two albums the band released that year - Mystery to Me followed in October 1973., 9:A - It's true. The practical reason for doing so was that around half of the 50 or so emperor penguin colonies have never been visited by humans. There are, they found, approximately 595,000 adult Emperor penguins in the colonies., 10:D - It's Kowalski who is second-in-command, often taking notes of Skipper's commands, and being behind a lot of the group's madcap inventions. For some reason, despite penguins not having teeth, in the cartoons he is portrayed as having an irrational fear of dentists. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, 11:C - The sailors recorded the meeting on the coast of South America saying they encountered "strange geese", and that "these goslings are black and do not fly, and they live on fish”. Some twenty-three years earlier Vasco da Gama mentioned encountering flightless birds as large as ducks while rounding the Cape of Good Hope, which were also, presumably, penguins., 12:B - While the female is off eating, the male balances the egg on his feet for 65-75 days, keeping it warm with a special pouch, 13:A - It was Robbie the Seal. His name is said to derive from the German for seal - robbe - and true fans of Pingu will know that he controversially changed his shade of blue-grey after four seasons for reasons that were never explained on-screen., 14:D - Lost And Found has been adapted into an animation and a theatre production aimed at young children. And yes, you'll be pleased to know, despite the little boy taking the penguin back to the Antarctic and leaving him behind, it does have a happy ending., 15:B - This is Piplup. It evolves into Prinplup and then Empoleon. Popplio is more like a seal and comes from an entirely different Pokémon family. According to the Pokédex, the guide to all species of Pokémon, Piplup is very proud, despite frequently falling over because of its poor walking abilities., 16:B - Yes. Having stolen him from the aquarium, the backpackers dumped him in shark-infested waters, where he was unlikely to have survived unless picked up by a rescue ship. Which he was. Lucky Dirk.

Scores

1. 6 and above.

   Good shout. You've picked up a lot of penguin facts along the way

2. 0 and above.

   Not so good. You need to pay more attention to World Penguin Day.

3. 12 and above.

   Congratulations. A David Attenborough-esque performance