Animals Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The best period is October to December.

This comes from the NCERT Class 4 EVS chapter 'Anita and the Honeybees', set in a village in Bihar. It says that honeybees lay their eggs from October to December and that this is the best time to start bee-keeping.

February to April, April to June and August to October are not the period the chapter gives, so each is wrong. The chapter names the egg-laying months as the time to begin.

Answer: D

The incorrect statement is that snakes chew up their prey.

Snakes cannot chew. They swallow their prey whole, often much wider than their own head, by stretching their loosely joined jaws and flexible skin. Their teeth are sharp and curved backwards, to grip the prey and stop it escaping rather than to chew it, and poisonous snakes have fangs through which venom is injected.

So the statements that snakes swallow food whole, have sharp teeth and that poisonous snakes have fangs are all correct; only chewing is wrong.

Answer: D

The correct statements are C and D.

The NCERT Class 4 EVS chapter 'A Day with Nandu' says that elephants do not rest very much and sleep for only two to four hours in a day, which is statement C, and that elephants love to play with mud and water, which is statement D.

A is wrong because the chapter gives a three-month-old baby elephant, Nandu, as weighing 200 kilograms, not 100. B is not the chapter's figure either: it says an adult elephant can eat more than 100 kilograms of leaves and twigs in one day, so the 200 kg of the statement is not supported. Every option other than 'C and D' includes A or B.

Answer: C

The answer is Both Assertion and Reason are true and Reason is the correct explanation of Assertion.

An elephant herd is a family group led by an old female, the matriarch, and made up of related females and their young. Young males grow up in the herd, but around adolescence, at about 14 to 15 years as the question says, they leave and live alone or in loose groups of males.

Because the males leave once they grow up, the herd that remains consists only of females and young elephants. The reason is the cause of the situation the assertion describes, so it explains it, which rules out the option saying it does not.

Answer: C

The answer is Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) explains (A).

Pashmina wool comes from the Changthangi goats of Ladakh, which live on high plateaus at around 5,000 metres, where winter temperatures fall far below freezing.

To survive this cold, the goats grow a very fine, soft and warm undercoat of hair beneath their outer coat. That warm undercoat is what the pashmina wool is made from. The reason therefore explains why these goats, living in extreme cold, are the source of such soft, warm wool.

Answer: C

The cow's short front teeth are for snipping grass and its large flat side teeth for chewing grass.

A cow has sharp front teeth (incisors) only in its lower jaw; it presses them against a hard pad in the upper jaw to cut or snip grass. The broad, flat molars at the sides grind and chew the grass, and it chews again when it brings food back up as cud.

Gnawing is what rodents such as rats and squirrels do with long, ever-growing front teeth, so the options using 'gnawing' describe a different animal. The last option reverses the roles of the two kinds of teeth.

Answer: D

The two birds are the Sun-bird and Tailor bird.

The purple sunbird builds a pear-shaped pouch of fibres, cobwebs and leaves that hangs from the tip of a thin branch, with a side entrance. The tailorbird stitches the edges of one or two large leaves together with plant fibre or cobweb to make a cradle, and builds its nest inside, so the nest hangs among the leaves of a bush.

The Indian robin nests in holes in walls, banks or tree stumps, and the barbet digs its nest-hole in a tree trunk; neither makes a hanging nest. The weaver bird does make a famous hanging nest, but it is paired with the robin, so that option fails.

Answer: C

The answer is Both 'A' and 'B' are correct and 'B' explains 'A'.

Statement A is correct. Lizards are cold-blooded; when it is cold their bodies cannot stay active, so they hide in crevices and go into a long, deep sleep through the winter.

Statement B states the general fact: some animals go into a long, deep sleep in particular seasons (hibernation in winter, or aestivation in hot, dry seasons). Lizards' winter sleep is one example of this, so B is the general rule that explains the particular case in A.

Answer: B

The one different from the others is the Crow.

Tortoise, crocodile, duck and fish can all live in or move about in water: fish live in it, crocodiles and turtles swim and spend much of their time in it, and ducks swim on it. The crow is a land bird that does not swim.

Grouping by flight would not work, since the duck flies too, and grouping by reptiles would leave two odd ones out, so the water criterion picks out the crow alone.

Answer: D

The true statement is that the female bird chooses the nest she likes the most and decides to lay her eggs there.

Among weaver birds, such as the baya weaver of India, the male weaves the hanging nest from strips of grass and leaves, often building several. Females inspect them and choose the one they prefer, and that is where they lay their eggs.

So it is wrong that both sexes build the nest together. Weaver birds are found mainly in Africa and Asia, not only in South America, and they are active by day, not nocturnal.