How do sharks clean their teeth? Try our kids’ quiz

Illustration: Hennie Haworth/The Guardian

1. Eliza, 4, asks: how do sharks clean their teeth?

   1. They don’t need to

   2. They have special toothbrushes made from algae

   3. The seawater cleans their teeth for them

   4. They rub their teeth against the bodies of their friends

2. Connie, 6, asks: what is the rarest flower in the world?

   1. The Middleman’s Blue

   2. The Middlemarch’s Yellow

   3. The Middlemist’s Red

   4. The Meddling Green

3. Chloe, 10, asks: why is the sport cricket called cricket?

   1. A player who could hit a ball as far as a cricket could jump was called a “cricket”

   2. Because cricket bats look like cricket insects

   3. It comes from the Middle Dutch word for a stick

   4. Because of the sound the ball makes as it hits the bat

4. Theo, 6, asks: how many Earths could fit into the sun?

   1. 500,000

   2. 1.3 million

   3. 2.6 million

   4. 700

5. Charlie, 5, asks: how do fish gills work?

   1. They create openings in the fish’s body for the water to enter into its veins

   2. They open and close, helping the fish to move along and find new oxygenated water

   3. They flap about and make air bubbles that the fish can breathe

   4. They absorb the oxygen in the water as it passes through them

Solutions

1:A - Sharks don’t need to clean their teeth because they contain fluoride, the substance that keeps teeth clean and that we put in toothpaste. This means they don’t get cavities. They also lose their teeth all the time, but they grow back. Sometimes sharks get help from wrasse fish which pick out the bits of food on shark teeth to eat themselves, yum!, 2:C - The Middlemist’s Red is a red camellia that was imported from China to England by a man named John Middlemist. Two flowers remain in the world, one in New Zealand and the other in Chiswick House and Gardens in the UK., 3:C - The name cricket derives from an old Middle Dutch word “krick” which meant stick. It may have come from the Middle Dutch phrase for hockey “met de (krik ket) sen” which means “with the stick chase”., 4:B - If you divide the volume of the sun by the volume of Earth, you get 1.3 million. So if you melted down the 1.3 million Earths, they would make up the volume of the sun., 5:D - Oxygenated water goes in through a fish’s mouth and is pumped to the gills.

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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