Answers to Trivia

Answers courtesy of Encarta

1. Fiction - While it’s true that pigs don’t have sweat glands, it’s not true that the unsweated salt makes their flesh taste salty. Salt is added to bacon as the meat is being cured.

2. Fact - Unlike most fishes, sharks do not have muscles that can draw water across their gills. And since fish breathe by drawing oxygenated water across their gills, it follows that sharks need to keep moving in order to get that oxygen into their system. While some sharks can pump water through their gills by opening and closing their mouths, most need to keep swimming

3. Fiction - The poor camel spider is actually a timid, nonpoisonous arachnid with a bad reputation. All that stuff about soldiers having their faces eaten off in the desert in Iraq? That's nonsense. It's a fun story to tell, though, especially if the victim of the so-called deadly spider is a friend's friend's brother's buddy.

4. Fiction - It takes a lot more than an Alka-Seltzer tablet to make a seagull explode. This urban legend has been around for decades, but it's simply not true. Seagulls have been known to vomit after eating Alka-Seltzer, but they have never been proven to explode.

5. Fact – The basilisk lizard can, indeed, run across the surface of a body of still water, thus earning it the nickname Jesus Christ lizard. Basilisk lizards are found in tropical America from Mexico to Ecuador.

6. Fact - The genus Nepenthes, commonly known as the pitcher plant is a type of carnivorous plant that's found scattered across the globe. All members of the genus are distinguished by a blossom that resembles a pitcher with a lid. The inside of the pitcher is slippery and the bottom of the pitcher is full of digestive juices. When an unlucky creature falls in, it's unable to climb out and is slowly digested by the plant. Not all pitcher plants are large enough to eat small reptiles like frogs and lizards. But some of them are.

7. Fact - The red dye carmine, used in everything from lipsticks to Coca-Cola, can only be obtained by crushing huge quantities of the insect Dactylopius coccus, or cochineal. That's right--those lovely red lips you see in fashion magazines? Covered in dried, smeared bugs. Yum.

8. Fiction - The pit bull terrier does have powerful jaws and a fierce reputation. However, these much-maligned pups have exactly the same jaw structure as any other dog. They can't lock their jaws any more than you or Snoopy can.

9. Fiction - There is no such thing as a sea wolf! Besides man, polar bears have no natural predators.

10. Fact - The Fitzroy river turtle (Rheodytes leukops), native to Australia, has a highly vascularized (lots of blood vessels) set of sacs (called bursae) at the end of its cloaca (or digestive/urogenital tract) that allows it to take in oxygen through its backside, as well as through its front. In other words, it can breathe through its butt