I was just watching a Who Want’s to be a Millionaire? compilation on the final, 1 million pound questions (here’s the video, timestamp 32:33: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwnzAQgVhkM) and one of the questions was:
Like (probably) many iNatters, I can clean up any Jeopardy! category about nature or science, but I am lost when they ask anything about pop culture, music, sports, the arts, etc.
And there’s plenty more where that came from! Just look through the Lepidoptera species list! I’m sure there is also a post where people talk about weird organism names too on here…
I’ve been at trivia where the sports questions are like, “who was the NBA all star from 1968?” and the nature questions are like “what’s the fourth planet from the sun?”.
a few years ago there was a Jeopardy category (a whole category!) about owls, and i dont remember the question, i think it was something about a part of the owl that doesnt move independantly or something, but i remember knowing the answer immediately- their eyes. not one contestant knew this lol
I could rant about this for hours…
Seriously, stuff like “who was leader of x country 5 generations before any of us were born” is considered common knowledge everyone should know, but the most elementary things of how our world works are considered “nerd facts” nobody needs. No wonder science denialism is on the rise and environmental crises aren’t taken seriously. Something is very off in our education systems.
Playing Trivial Pursuit, I was once asked about the bodyguard of some politician who died before I was born. Like… How and more importantly why am I supposed to know that? (My “”“nature”“” question then was “Who invented the telephone?”)
There is a quiz on BBC Radio 4 called Brain of Britain. I heard this a few years ago.
Q: Which subspecies of tiger is found in India?
Brain of Britain contestant: African.
From my brief hour or 2 watch of trivia game show compilation, so much of the questions are like that. I suppose its due to it being a fixed answer, like the date so-and-so won 1st place in the Olympics is not going to change, but the genus that some leafhopper is placed in now may not be the same in 2 years time… but I suppose a lot of nature questions can be fixed too… agreed to terms of specific body parts and objects etc.