Beyond the answers - interesting background to this quiz

A lake so deep it holds a fifth of the world's fresh water

Lake Tanganyika, the answer to the first question, is not just the deepest lake in Africa but the second-deepest in the world, reaching roughly 1,470 metres at its deepest point. It stretches along the borders of Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and Zambia. Its age is even more remarkable than its depth: it is one of the oldest freshwater lakes on Earth, and that long isolation has produced hundreds of fish species found nowhere else.

Kaa the python, and the animals of The Jungle Book

In Rudyard Kipling's stories, Kaa is a python, though the 1967 Disney film turned the character into a comical, hypnotic figure quite different from the calm, powerful snake of the original text. Kipling's Mowgli stories also feature Baloo the bear and Bagheera the black panther, and they have been adapted so often that many people know the characters better than the books they came from.

Two capitals that are easy to mix up

Malaysia's capital is Kuala Lumpur, but the country's administrative centre is Putrajaya, which is why the two are sometimes confused. A similar split exists in South Africa, which spreads its functions across Pretoria, Cape Town and Bloemfontein. Not every well-known city is a capital, either: San Diego is the largest city in its region but the seat of government in California is Sacramento.

Why the Alps are a shared mountain range

The Alps are not the property of one or two countries: eight states share them, including France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Slovenia. That shared geography has shaped everything from border treaties to ski tourism, and it explains why Alpine culture varies so much from valley to valley. The same mountain range can feel French in one place and distinctly German-speaking in the next.