How do bears know when to wake up from their hibernation? The kids’ quiz

Illustration: Hennie Haworth/The Guardian

1. Shaia, 9, asks: how do bears know when to wake up from their hibernation?

   1. They pay a squirrel 10 acorns to wake them up

   2. They set an alarm

   3. Their body senses the warming temperature

   4. They have no idea when to wake up

2. Cooper, 6, asks: why do we stop growing when we become adults? But our hair keeps growing!

   1. Hair doesn’t keep growing when we’re adults!

   2. Physical growth is not linked to our hair growth

   3. We never stop growing

   4. Adults shrink every year by 1cm

3. Ben, 10, asks: are dogs’ front paws hands?

   1. No, they are too anatomically different from hands

   2. Yes, all front paws on any animal are called hands

   3. Yes, the back paws are classed as hands, too

   4. No, hands have to be bigger. Human babies’ hands are technically paws

4. Fintan, 7, asks: how many different species of sea slugs are there?

   1. 200

   2. 3,000 have been discovered – though there are likely to be more

   3. 20,000

   4. Researchers have no idea how many

5. Andrew, 9, asks: how many seconds are there in a leap year?

   1. 31,622,400 seconds – if you don’t count leap seconds

   2. 41,622,400 seconds

   3. 51,622,400 seconds

   4. Too many to count

Solutions

1:C - Bears can sense when the temperature gets warmer – they also depend on some internal cues such as energy reserves. Male bears will normally emerge first and later the female bears will come out with their cubs., 2:B - The somatotropin hormone makes us grow up into adults. When your bones have finished growing, somatotropin helps keep you healthy, including regulating your levels of blood sugar. Your rate of hair growth does slow as you age., 3:A - Compared with hands, dog paws have different muscle and bone structures and no opposable thumbs., 4:B - There are about 3,000 known species of sea slug, or nudibranch. They have male and female reproductive organs, and some species are very brightly coloured., 5:A - There are 366 days in a leap year. So if you calculate that there are 24 hours in each, containing 60 minutes in each, each of which takes 60 seconds, you get: 366x24x60x60 = 31,622,400. However, a one-second “leap second” is sometimes added to leap years to adjust for inconsistencies in the Earth’s rotation. This last happened in 2016.

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 podcast answering children’s questions. Do check out her books, Everything Under the Sun and Everything Under the Sun: Quiz Book, as well as her new title, Everything Under the Sun: All Around the World.