Keep Salmon Wild! See how many colors you can use to color me. Go wild!! illustration by Guido Rahr, President of Wild Salmon Center www.wildsalmoncenter.org colored by True or Color me too! Wild salmon love to False? travel. See if you can name all the countries where wild salmon can Test your wild salmon I.Q. be found. The results may surprise you! Russia. and Korea, Japan, Washington and Alaska), Canada, Canada, Alaska), and Washington Answers: USA (California, Oregon, Oregon, (California, USA Answers: The salmon’s sense of smell is more keen than a dog or bear. After reaching freshwater, salmon Salmon can lay thousands of eggs. True. Salmon navigate their life journey using start eating anything in sight to True. Some female spring Chinook can lay many environmental cues, including the scent of help them with the difficult task of their home stream. They also use the earth’s more than 4,000 eggs. magnetic fields and the position of the sun in reaching their spawning grounds. the sky to find their way. False. Salmon stop eating after reaching You can tell how old salmon are by freshwater to spawn; they live off fat stored counting the rings on their scales. in their body. To return to the spawning Salmon fossils are even older than grounds where they were born, salmon True. You can count the rings on a fish scale dinosaurs. may travel hundreds or thousands of miles to determine their age much like counting the rings on a tree. False. The oldest salmon fossil found is 50 upstream over natural and man-made barriers million years old and dinosaurs lived between including waterfalls, rapids and dams. Imagine doing that on an empty stomach! 65 and 160 million years ago. Just 5 to 6 million Chum salmon are also named Dog years ago, salmon had fangs, weighed over 500 salmon because of their large dog-like pounds and were ten feet long! As salmon travel upstream, their “fangs.” shape and color changes as part of False. Salmon do have a keen sense of Salmon can only live in fresh water. the sexual maturation process. smell—even better than dogs, but chum salmon False. Salmon and steelhead are among only a True. For example, male salmon develop get their nickname “dog salmon” because Alas- few creatures on earth that are “anadromous.” hooked snouts, male pink salmon grow a hump kans feed them to their dog sled teams. What does this mean? They are born in on their back, chum salmon of both sexes freshwater, migrate to the ocean to grow and develop purple streaks on their sides and sockeye salmon turn bright red. mature, then return to freshwater to spawn. www.wildsalmoncenter.org.