Nature trivia

Nature covers animals, plants and a little ecology. Questions include animal records that don't change (the blue whale is the largest animal, the cheetah the fastest on land), baby and group names, diets, how plants work, and the odd facts that make biology fun, such as octopuses having three hearts.

The fun part: names

A good share of the category is vocabulary. A baby kangaroo is a joey. A female deer is a doe. Lions live in prides, crows gather in a murder, owls in a parliament. Animals that eat only plants are herbivores, those active at night are nocturnal. These questions are easy if you've met the word once and close to impossible if you haven't, which makes them good practice-mode material.

What we leave out

Anything that depends on a population count or a conservation status is out, because those change and get revised. So are "largest" questions where scientists still argue about the measurement. Where a superlative is in the bank, it is one with a clear and long-standing answer.

How to get better at it

Watch for distractors that are nearly right. The fastest land animal question offers the pronghorn, which is the second fastest and better at long distances. The largest fish question offers the great white, which is the largest predatory fish but not the largest fish. When two answers look plausible, the question's exact wording usually decides it.