Game
Real or Fake?
Some of these animals exist. Some we made up. 12 strange creatures – can you tell which is which?
Real or Fake?
Real animal or something we made up? Pick one – the answer comes right away.
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Question 1 / 12
The pink fairy armadillo – a hamster-sized armadillo with a pink shell that “swims” through sand.
Real! It lives in central Argentina, and its shell is pink because you can see the blood vessels through it.
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Question 2 / 12
The winged river hedgehog – a hedgehog that glides from one riverbank to the other on flaps of skin.
Totally made up. Hedgehogs can swim a little, but none of them fly.
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Question 3 / 12
The Venezuelan poodle moth – a fluffy white moth with a poodle’s coat that science still hasn’t officially named.
Real! A zoologist photographed it in 2009. It went viral – and it still has no scientific name.
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Question 4 / 12
The blue dragon – a sea slug smaller than your thumb that eats venomous jellies and keeps their stingers.
Real! It floats upside down on the ocean and stores its prey’s stinging cells in its own “fingers”.
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Question 5 / 12
The pygmy thunder moose – a knee-high moose whose call is so loud it can be heard 10 km away.
Made up. Real moose are huge, and no knee-high deer is known for thunder-level calls.
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Question 6 / 12
The aye-aye – a lemur that finds its food by tapping on trees with one long, skinny middle finger.
Real! It taps up to eight times a second and listens for grubs hiding inside the wood.
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Question 7 / 12
The rainbow snow badger – a badger whose fur turns rainbow-coloured every winter.
Fake. Some animals do change colour in winter – but to white, not rainbow.
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Question 8 / 12
The star-nosed mole – a mole with 22 pink tentacles on its nose that can smell underwater.
Real! It blows bubbles and sniffs them back in – and it’s the fastest-eating mammal on Earth.
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Question 9 / 12
The mata mata – a turtle that looks like a pile of dead leaves and vacuums up fish.
Real! It opens its huge mouth so fast that passing fish get sucked straight in.
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Question 10 / 12
The tufted desert penguin – a penguin that lives in the Sahara and keeps cool by burying itself in sand.
Fake. Penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere, and none of them call the Sahara home.
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Question 11 / 12
The glass frog – a frog with see-through belly skin, so you can watch its heart beat.
Real! When it sleeps, it even hides most of its red blood cells in its liver to become more transparent.
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Question 12 / 12
The spotted sky turtle – a turtle that floats in the air by filling its shell with gas.
Fake, sadly. Turtles stay firmly on land or in the water.
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