Lakes: From the Great Lakes to Hidden Gems!

#68 Week 14

Author

Sigrun Sørumgård
April 04, 2025

How well do you know the world’s lakes, from the deepest to the largest, and from the saltiest to the ones that has disappeared?

  1. Which lake is known for being the world's highest navigable lake?

  2. Which lake is located on the border between Israel and Jordan and is one of the world's most saline?

  3. Which lake is the largest in Scandinavia?

  4. What is the largest lake in the world by area?

  5. What is the largest lake in Africa?

  6. Which lake is the deepest in the world?

  7. Which lake borders both the United States and Canada and is the largest in North America?

  8. Which large lake in Central Asia is drying up due to water withdrawals from the rivers that flow into it?

  9. Which country has the most lakes in the world?

  10. Which lake in Bolivia was known for being almost completely dry during the dry season and flooded during the rainy season? Unfortunately, in 2015, the lake was declared completely evaporated due to climate change (including the melting of glaciers in the Andes) and the accumulation of sediments caused by the local mining industry?

The Wonder Wall

  • Pekwachnamaykoskwaskwaypinwanik Lake is a lake in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The name is Cree for "where the wild trout are caught by fishing with hooks." It is the longest place name in Canada at 31 letters long. It is just southeast of Red Sucker Lake in northeastern Manitoba, near its border with Ontario.

  • All lakes are either open or closed. If water leaves a lake by a river or other outlet, it is open. All freshwater lakes are open. If water only leaves a lake by evaporation, the lake is closed. Closed lakes usually become saline (salty). This is because as the water evaporates, it leaves behind solids—mostly salts.

  • Finland has the nickname ‘Land of the Thousand Lakes’. And there are over 187,000 lakes in the country.

Yesterday´s Questions & Answers

  1. What is the process by which an insect changes form from larva to adult?

    Metamorphosis. Larvae are young, immature stages that many animals go through after hatching from an egg and before undergoing metamorphosis to an adult (imago).

  2. What group of insects do ladybugs belong to?

    Ladybugs are a well-known and beloved family of insects among the beetles.

  3. How many legs does a butterfly have?

    The butterfly has 6 legs like most other insects.

  4. What are the names of the eyes that many insects have, which consist of many small lenses, or described another way: many small single eyes (ommatidia) gathered into one “big eye”?

    Compound eyes occur in most insects as well as in crustaceans, daggertails, and the fossil group trilobites.

  5. Which insect can live for several years underground before emerging to reproduce? In Norway, this insect is believed to have a 5–7 year life cycle, while the North American ones may have a 13 or 17 year life cycle.

    Cicadas are a type of insect that is a suborder of the cicadas. About 45,000 species are known in the world, and of these, about 320 are found in Norway.

  6. Which insect can pull more than a thousand times its own body weight, and is considered the world's strongest insect?

    The horned dung beetle, Onthophagus taurus, is the world's strongest insect. It can pull 1141 times its own body weight. A 70 kg man lifting six full double-decker buses would be equivalent.

  7. What type of insect was the first animal to travel to space, in 1947. They were sent to the very edge of the Earth’s atmosphere – and came back alive!

    Fruit flies. They reached an altitude of 108 kilometres above the ground, and it has been agreed that space begins at 100 kilometres above the ground!

  8. What is the name of the largest butterfly in the world?

    The Atlas moth (Attacus atlas). It has a relatively small body, but large wings and a wingspan of up to 30 cm.

  9. Which species of beetle was an important religious symbol in ancient Egypt?

    The scarab, or pill-thriller beetle, is of the species Scarabeus sacer of the family Scarabidae. The scarab is a symbol of life and rebirth and was used as an amulet or sigil in ancient Egypt.

  10. What proportion of the world’s insect biomass consists of ants?

    Estimates in various environments suggest that they contribute 15-20% (on average and almost 25% in the tropics) of the total zoological biomass, exceeding the weight of vertebrates.