Ice Age Questions
1. What are some possible causes of an ice age?
2. What stage of succession occurs after an ice age?
3. Suppose an ice age kills all animals except for those with really thick skin. What
type of natural selection is this?
4. What is the evolutionary significance of the rodent creature trying to bury the
acorn it was holding?
5. Does the rodent surviving all of its hardships truly represent Darwin’s theory of
Natural Selection?
6. What do humans find in tar pits millions of years later?
7. What type of adaptation/evolution would a flying armadillo exhibit?
8. Would the armadillo’s (from question 7) children be able to fly?
9. If the flying ability of the armadillo resulted from a mutation in the genes, would
its children be able to fly?
10. Do sloths migrate? What animals migrate south for the winter?
11. What do rhinoceroses eat? What term describes this eating style?
12. Do rhinoceroses generally commit revenge? What animal does perform revenge?
13. Do saber tooth tigers hunt alone or in packs?
14. How did the dodos die out?
15. How did the movie portray the dodos as dying out?
16. Would three melons be enough to last the dodo civilization through an ice age?
17. How long does a typical ice age last?
18. What is the normal habitat that a sloth lives in?
19. Do mammoths usually move alone or in groups?
20. Suppose female sloths found stupidity to be an attractive characteristic in a male
sloth. How would the sloth population be affected in that case?
21. What class are bony fish classified in?
22. Of the four stages of “evolution” Sid saw in the museum, what phylum/class
would each creature belong to?
23. Given the creatures in question 22, would evolution really occur in that fashion?
24. What are some theories on why ancient cavemen drew on cave walls?
25. Besides mammoths and saber tooth tigers, what other creatures did man hunt?
26. Could a mammoth, sloth, saber tooth tiger, and human baby be expected to
survive a volcanic eruption?
27. Is walking on hind legs an acquired characteristic or a natural trait?
28. Would Manfred, Diego, and Sid usually be classified as a herd?
29. What would be the usual human response when they see a mammoth?
30. What is the study where a live organism is frozen and encased in ice?
31. Would it be expected that the rodent creature would survive 20,000 years frozen
in a block of ice?
32. What is the most likely location of the rodent creature in 20,000 years time?
Answers
1. Distance from the sun, cataclysmic events, nuclear winter (only in today’s
society)
2. Secondary succession
3. Directional selection
4. Early ancestor to the squirrel; attempting to store food
5. No; simply surviving does not ensure passage of genes to the next generation
6. We later find fossils of the animals stuck in the tar pits
7. Acquired characteristics
8. No, they will not be able to fly, because acquired characteristics are not passed on
9. Yes, they will be able to fly because it is in their genes and has been passed down
by their parent
10. No, sloths do not migrate; some birds migrate
11. They eat plants; they are called herbivores
12. No; humans are the only creatures to come up with the concept of revenge
13. They hunt in packs
14. Dodos died out from being hunted to extinction.
15. The movie portrayed all the dodos dying out from either falling over cliffs or into
volcanic craters; some may have died from starvation
16. No. Definitely not.
17. Approximately 10,000 years (not said in the movie; might want to accept “a
million billion years”)
18. In the forest, or rainforest, in a tree
19. In groups
20. The sloth population would then tend towards stupidity, thereby lowering the
survival rate because the stupidity genes are being passed on; extinction would be
possible
21. Class Osteichthyes
22. Most likely: Rotifera, Platyhelminthes (flatworms), Chordata (amphibia),
Chordata (mammalia)
23. Not likely to have occurred only like that; over millions of years, possibly it
looked like that, with other forms in between
24. Storytelling, legacies, religious purposes, etc
25. Deer, pigs, birds
26. Possibly the tiger, if it was fast; sloth would be to slow, mammoth as well, AND
has to much fur/wool/outer layer covering, and baby would die, easily
27. Natural trait; each newborn has the ability to walk, just not the strength
28. No; a herd is usually defined as a large group of animals of the same species
29. Attack probably
30. Cryogenics
31. No, by all rights, it should have died. Rodents are weird.
32. Sunny Hawaii!