Credo Reference Blog

This week: That’s Life! One of the new reference works added to the Credo Reference database is the Penguin Dictionary of Biology. All the answers to this brainteaser can be found in it. Try the quiz: you may know more about this subject than you think. After all, biology is the science of life!

1. Which scientist was born in 1809, went on a momentous voyage on HMS Beagle, and wrote “On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”?

2. Which addictive alkaloid is found in cigarettes, snuff, chewing tobacco and some gums?

3. Bile is a fluid produced by which part of the body?

4. Which continent produces more than 90% of the world rice crop?

5. In a tooth, what is the name for the substance beneath the enamel which occupies the bulk of the tooth volume?

6. What is the meaning of the word “unicellular”?

7. What phrase was introduced in 1872 by the British air pollution inspector, Robert Angus Smith, when he discovered that rain falling around Manchester contained sulphuric acid?

8. Ascorbic acid is another name for which vitamin?

9. Which important alkaloid, extracted from the bark of Cinchona species, is used in the treatment of malaria?

10. What is the name of the flap on the wall of the pharynx against which the glottis pushes during swallowing, preventing food, etc., from entering the trachea?

Find the answers to this quiz here.

Image: “Aspidophorus Chiloensis and Agriopus Hispidus, plate 7 from ‘The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S Beagle, 1832-36′”, by Charles Darwin. Find out more information about this image on Credo Reference.