Can penguins be friends and why do clocks tick? Try our kids’ quiz

1. Connie, 6, asks: can penguins be friends with each other?

   1. Penguins never make friends with each other

   2. A penguin is only friends with their mating partner

   3. They have lots of friends

   4. Some are friendly – it just depends on the penguin

2. Rosa, 5, asks: why do clocks tick?

   1. To make sure the clock’s owner is always on time

   2. When the clock’s “gears” push its hands forwards, a noise is made

   3. It helps you to know when a clock is broken

   4. The person who invented clocks hated silence!

3. Kenzie, 8, asks: why do we have a tongue?

   1. So we can taste yummy (and not so yummy!) food

   2. To help us make sounds

   3. To prepare the food we eat for digestion

   4. All the above

4. Hyman, 7, asks: why do dogs like to be stroked on their bellies?

   1. Humans like doing it, and dogs want to make their owners happy

   2. A dog’s belly is very responsive to touch

   3. It helps them digest food

   4. Lying on their back gives them a break from running

5. Mae, 6, asks: why are lips the colour that they are?

   1. The colour comes from blood vessels and varies from reddish pink to brown

   2. Lips are a different colour from our skin to make it easier to apply lipstick

   3. To make it clear that the teeth are underneath them

   4. To show they are more prone to sunburn

Solutions

1:C - A penguin’s closest friend is their mating partner, but they do have a wide colony of other friends. Studies have shown that African penguins change their call so they sound more like their friends!, 2:B - Ticking clocks run on moving metal wheels, or “gears”, which give the clock its ticking noise., 3:D - The tongue has so many important roles to play in the body! Tongues can make more than 20 different movements every single minute to make speech sounds. Its taste buds regenerate every two weeks, to help us taste food – this is important so that we don’t eat food that has gone off (our tongue tells us it tastes disgusting so we spit it out)., 4:B - Dogs’ bellies have a thin layer of fur which covers nerve endings linking to the spine. This means that the area is very receptive to stroking, which makes the dog feel happy., 5:A - The skin of your lips has only three to five layers, whereas the skin on your face has up to 16 layers, so we can see the blood vessels that send blood to our lips – these make our lips look reddish pink to brown.

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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