Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

The last divided capital in Europe

Nicosia has been the capital of Cyprus for centuries, but since 1974 the city has been split by a buffer zone, with a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north. It is often described as the last divided capital in Europe. The wider island sits in the eastern Mediterranean, closer to the coasts of Turkey and Syria than to mainland Greece, which explains why Athens, however famous, was never its capital.

A plant that digests, not just traps

The Venus flytrap gets most of the attention, but the largest carnivorous plant by volume is Nepenthes rajah, a pitcher plant native to the mountains of Borneo. Its pitchers can hold litres of liquid and have been known to trap small mammals as well as insects. Carnivorous plants generally grow in poor soils and use trapped prey as a source of nutrients, especially nitrogen, that the ground does not provide.

The longest cave system on Earth

Mammoth Cave, beneath the hills of Kentucky, is the longest known cave system in the world, with hundreds of miles of mapped passages and more still being explored. Its name refers to its sheer size rather than to any extinct elephant. Nearby, Jewel Cave and Wind Cave in South Dakota are also extensive, but neither comes close to Mammoth's recorded length.

Blood flow and the Atlas Mountains

Arteries carry blood away from the heart, while veins return it; capillaries are the fine vessels where the exchange of gases and nutrients happens. The Atlas Mountains, meanwhile, stretch across Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, separating the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts from the Sahara. They are not volcanic in origin but were formed by the collision of tectonic plates, and their highest peaks hold snow in winter.