Class 6 Science Chapter 10 Living Creatures – Extra Questions with Answers

Extra practice questions for Class 6 Science Chapter 10 (Living Creatures: Exploring their Characteristics), beyond the textbook. These Class 6 Science Chapter 10 important questions are handy for last-minute exam practice.

Very Short Answer Questions (1 mark)

Q1. Name the jelly-like cluster of frog eggs.
Ans: Spawn.

Q2. Through what structures do plants breathe?
Ans: Stomata (tiny pores on leaves).

Q3. What are the four stages of a mosquito’s life cycle?
Ans: Egg, larva, pupa, adult.

Q4. What does a touch-me-not plant do when touched?
Ans: It folds its leaves — a response to the stimulus of touch.

Q5. What waste products do animals excrete?
Ans: Sweat and urine (among others).

Short Answer Questions (2–3 marks)

Q6. A seed is kept without water for several days. Will it germinate? Explain, and describe what conditions it needs instead.
Ans: No, it will not germinate. Seeds need water (along with air and suitable light/darkness) to germinate. Without water, the biological processes needed to start growth cannot begin.

Q7. Explain why waterlogged soil can also prevent a seed from germinating, even though seeds need water.
Ans: While seeds need water, too much water fills the air spaces in the soil, cutting off the air supply the seed also needs. Without air, the seed cannot germinate properly even though water is present.

Q8. Compare the life cycles of a mosquito and a frog: name one similarity and one difference.
Ans: Similarity: both begin as eggs laid in water and pass through an aquatic stage before becoming adults. Difference: a mosquito has a true pupal stage where it does not feed or move much before becoming an adult, while a frog’s tadpole develops gradually, growing legs and losing its tail, without a distinct pupal stage.

Q9. A pot is laid on its side (not upright) and given water, air, and light. Predict how the shoot and root will grow, and explain why.
Ans: The shoot will bend and grow upward, toward the light, and the root will bend and grow downward, into the soil — regardless of the pot’s sideways orientation, because plants naturally direct their growth toward light (shoots) and downward (roots).

Q10. Why is kerosene oil sometimes poured on stagnant water bodies?
Ans: To disrupt the mosquito life cycle — the oil film blocks air from reaching the larvae and pupae developing in the water, killing them before they can become adult mosquitoes.

Higher-Order Thinking / Application Questions

Q11. Charan says a fallen log is non-living because it doesn’t move. Charu says it’s living because it came from a tree. Whose reasoning is more correct, and why?
Ans: Neither reasoning alone is fully correct, but the conclusion that the log is non-living is right — not because it doesn’t move (movement alone doesn’t decide this), but because the log can no longer grow, respire, respond to stimuli, or reproduce. Its origin from a living tree doesn’t matter once it stops performing life processes.

Q12. A crystal placed in a solution appears to “grow” larger over time. Is the crystal alive? Use the chapter’s characteristics of living things to justify your answer.
Ans: No, the crystal is not alive. Although it increases in size (growth), it does not respire, excrete waste, respond to stimuli, or reproduce — all the characteristics of a living thing must be present together, not just one.

Q13. Explain, using the idea of a stimulus, why pulling your hand away from a hot object and a touch-me-not folding its leaves are examples of the same underlying life characteristic, even though one involves an animal and the other a plant.
Ans: Both are responses to a stimulus — an event (heat, touch) that prompts a living being to react. Even though the mechanisms differ (nerve-based reflex in animals vs. a plant’s own response mechanism), both show that living things react to changes in their environment, which is one of the defining characteristics of life.

Written by Satish

NCERTBooks.org is an independent educational resource run by a small team focused on making official NCERT textbooks easy to find, read, and download for students, parents, and teachers across India. We are not affiliated with NCERT or the Ministry of Education -- we organise publicly available NCERT content by class and subject, verify links against official sources, and build tools (like our in-browser reader) that make studying more convenient. Every guide we publish is written and reviewed by our team based on the actual NCERT curriculum and syllabus.