Alaskan Animal Assembly Trivia Quiz

Answer: Only males have antlers and shed them every year

This bull moose (or elk, in British usage) has been photographed in late spring. His antlers have just begun to regrow and will, over the summer, become several times as large, developing the typical shovel shape. The cow moose normally has no antlers although in rare cases, a hormonal imbalance can cause the female to grow a rudimentary pair.

Answer: 60-80 kph (35-50 mph)

Reindeer are quite accomplished sprinters, easily able to outrun a predator such as a wolf or bear. Even a young calf on its second day of life can match the pace of an olympic sprinter and adults are even faster. Reindeer also have great endurance, easily covering a marathon distance (42 km / 26 mi) per day while migrating.

Answer: The North American variant lives in trees, the African one on the ground

Unlike the ground-dwelling, burrowing Old World porcupines, American porcupines are accomplished climbers and live in trees. Their quills, made of keratin-plated hair, look very similar when viewed from afar, but the American porcupine's quills grow singly, while the Old World porcupine's grow in clusters. All porcupines are purely herbivores.

Answer: Weasel

The raccoon family, procyonidae, belongs to the superfamily of musteloidea, which includes weasels, otters and badgers. Like cats and dogs, most musteloidea are carnivores, although the raccoon itself is omnivorous, typically deriving about one third of its nutrition from plants and two thirds from animals.

In the German language, the raccoon is called "Waschbär" which literally translates to "washing bear". This name - similarly existing in many other languages as well - alludes to the bear-like body shape of the raccoon and its habit to wash its food before eating it.

The English name of raccoon is a loanword from Algonquin with a similar origin.

Answer: Thiols

The smelly mix sprayed by a skunk gains its odor mainly from three thiols. 2-butene-1-thiol (C4H8S) is the simplest of these, the others are 3-methyl-1-butanethiol (C5H12S) and 2-quinolinemethanethiol (C10H12NS), the latter of which is a diaromatic compound.

The skunk's alternate name, polecat, is somewhat of a misnomer as, like the weasel and raccoon, the skunk is rather related to dogs than to cats.

Answer: One mated pair and their younger offspring

Wolf packs are typically families consisting of an older pair, mated for life, traveling with several years' worth of their offspring. The young wolves stay with their parents anywhere from one to four and a half years before dispersing and finding a mate of their own.

In rare case, two or three families can share a territory and live together for some time. Wolves need a lot of room - the core territory of a pack (usually 5 to 10 animals) is around 35 square kilometers (15 square miles) and large, strong packs can have territories several dozen times larger.

Answer: The domestic cat

The lynx genus (which includes the bobcat as one of its four species) consists of medium-sized wild cats that are close relatives to the domestic cat. A characteristic detail of all lynx species are the prominent tufts on the ears. The Eurasian lynx is the largest of the four lynx species, slightly larger than the Canada lynx. Both the Canada and Eurasian lynx can show the silvery-brown coat without prominent spots while the Iberian lynx and bobcat all have a clearly spotted fur.

Answer: Kodiak bear

All four names - Afognak, Chirikof, Kodiak, and Shuyak - are islands or island groups within the Kodiak archipelago. The Kodiak bear can be found on all of them but Chirikof, which, being treeless, does not present a suitable habitat for brown bears. Biologically, the Kodiak bear has been genetically isolated for at least the last ten thousand years, when the retreating ice in the Bering strait isolated it from both the Kamchatka bears (a close relative) and other bears living near the western tip of Alaska. Male Kodiak bears can weigh up to a metric ton, making them the heaviest land-based carnivores on Earth (polar bears are considered marine mammals).

Answer: Two and a half years

Polar bear cubs are born in the winter, with the mother entering a state similar to hibernation in a specially protected maternity den. After birth, the mother will remain in this state, nursing her young, for usually two to three months, during which the infant animals grow in weight by a factor of 10 to 15.

The cubs are usually weaned and chased away by their mother during their third summer, although in some areas, this can already occur in the second summer.

Answer: Steller sea lion

While the pictured California sea lion can be found hunting in Alaskan waters during the warmer months, it is primarily native to the Californian and Mexican coast. The Steller sea lion, also called northern sea lion, however, can primarily be found near the Bering strait, hunting and breeding both in Russian and Alaskan coastal waters.

The Japanese sea lion was last sighted in the 1970s and is considered extinct.