Animal Quiz — 50 Questions with Answers
5 rounds · 50 questions
Mammals
Picking up where you left off.
How many neck vertebrae does a giraffe have?
Final score
0 / 50
Round by round
- Mammals
- Ocean Life
- Birds & Bugs
- Records & Superpowers
- Hard Mode
Show all 50 questions with answers and explanations
Every question, answer and explanation
Mammals
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How many neck vertebrae does a giraffe have?
Answer Seven — the same as humans
Seven, the same as almost every mammal. The difference is size, not number — each of a giraffe's neck vertebrae can be about 25 centimeters long.
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What is a giant panda's main food?
Answer Bamboo
Bamboo makes up almost the whole diet, yet the panda still has a carnivore's digestive system. It extracts so little from each stem that it has to eat for most of the day, often more than twelve kilograms of it.
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What do koalas almost exclusively eat?
Answer Eucalyptus leaves
Eucalyptus is toxic to most animals and low in energy. The koala can handle it thanks to specialized gut bacteria, and the sheer poverty of the diet is much of why it sleeps so much.
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What is actually stored in a camel's hump?
Answer Fat
Fat, not water. Burning that fat does release some water, but it also costs oxygen to breathe, and a camel's real trick is elsewhere — it can lose a quarter of its body weight in water and still function.
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How do bats find their way in total darkness?
Answer Echolocation
Echolocation: they call and read the returning echoes. Bats are not blind — most see perfectly well — but sound gives them a picture that works in complete darkness.
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Zebra stripe patterns are...
Answer Unique to each individual
No two zebras carry the same pattern, much like fingerprints. What the stripes are for is still argued over; the strongest recent evidence points at biting flies, which struggle to land on striped surfaces.
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Whales belong to which group of animals?
Answer Mammals
Mammals. They breathe air, are warm-blooded and nurse their young — and their front flippers still contain the bones of a hand, fingers included.
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Kangaroos belong to which group of mammals?
Answer Marsupials
Marsupials. The newborn is about the size of a jellybean and has to crawl unaided from the birth canal to the pouch, a journey that takes several minutes.
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A hippo's famous 'red sweat' is really...
Answer A natural sunscreen secretion
The secretion starts colorless and turns red-orange in the air. It works as both sunscreen and antiseptic, which matters for an animal that spends its days in water and its nights walking on land.
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Which animal sleeps only about two hours a day in the wild?
Answer The elephant
Wild elephants tracked with sensors averaged around two hours a night, the least of any mammal measured. They often go two days without sleeping at all when moving between feeding grounds.
Ocean Life
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How many hearts does an octopus have?
Answer Three
Three: two pump blood through the gills and one sends it to the rest of the body. That third heart stops beating when the octopus swims, which is why it prefers to crawl.
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What color is an octopus's blood?
Answer Blue
Blue, because it carries oxygen with copper rather than iron. Copper works better in cold, low-oxygen water, which is exactly where many octopuses live.
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The largest animal ever known to have lived is...
Answer The blue whale
The blue whale, larger than any dinosaur we know of. Its tongue alone can weigh as much as an elephant, and a newborn calf gains around 90 kilograms a day.
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In seahorses, which parent carries the eggs?
Answer The male
The male carries the eggs in a pouch and gives birth. He does not supply the eggs, but he does supply nutrients and oxygen while they develop, which makes it a true pregnancy rather than mere babysitting.
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A shark's skeleton is made of...
Answer Cartilage
Cartilage, which is lighter than bone and helps a shark stay afloat without a swim bladder. It also rarely fossilizes, and that is why the shark fossil record is mostly teeth.
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How do dolphins sleep?
Answer One half of the brain at a time
One hemisphere sleeps while the other stays awake, and the eye on the opposite side stays open. A dolphin that slept fully would stop swimming and stop breathing — for them, breathing is a conscious act.
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An electric eel can discharge up to about...
Answer 600 volts or more
Around 600 volts, produced by stacked cells that work rather like batteries in series. It is not actually an eel: it is a knifefish, more closely related to catfish.
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Clownfish live in partnership with which creature?
Answer Sea anemones
Sea anemones sting almost everything else, but a layer of mucus lets the clownfish move among the tentacles unharmed. Both sides gain — the fish gets shelter, the anemone gets cleaning and scraps.
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What decides the sex of many sea turtle hatchlings?
Answer The temperature of the sand
The temperature of the sand during incubation. Warmer nests produce females and cooler ones males, which is why a changing climate is a direct problem for sea turtle populations.
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Where is a starfish's mouth?
Answer At the center of its underside
Underneath, at the center where the arms meet. A starfish can also push its stomach out through that mouth to digest prey outside its own body.
Birds & Bugs
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Which of these birds cannot fly?
Answer The ostrich
The ostrich. Its wings are still useful — for balance while running, for shade over chicks, and for display — but it cannot get off the ground.
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How do honeybees tell hive-mates where food is?
Answer A waggle dance
The waggle dance encodes both direction and distance: the angle of the run relative to vertical matches the angle of the food relative to the sun, and the length of the waggle indicates how far.
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Ants can lift roughly how many times their own body weight?
Answer 50 times
Around fifty times their own weight. This is less about muscle quality than about scale — as an animal gets smaller, its strength falls more slowly than its weight, so small creatures are proportionally very strong.
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An owl can rotate its head about...
Answer 270 degrees
About 270 degrees. Owls need it because their eyes are fixed tubes that cannot swivel, and their necks carry extra vertebrae plus blood vessels arranged so the supply is not cut off mid-turn.
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Which bird can fly backwards?
Answer The hummingbird
The hummingbird, which can also hover and fly straight up. Its wings trace a figure eight rather than flapping up and down, so it makes lift on both strokes.
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Butterflies taste their food with their...
Answer Feet
Their feet. Chemical receptors on the legs let a butterfly identify a plant simply by standing on it, which is how females check a leaf before laying eggs.
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Wild penguins live naturally in...
Answer The Southern Hemisphere
The Southern Hemisphere, and not only in ice — there are penguins in South Africa, Peru and Australia. The Galapagos penguin lives at the equator, but no wild penguin lives in the Arctic.
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A dragonfly's eyes are...
Answer Compound eyes with thousands of lenses
Compound eyes with tens of thousands of separate lenses, wrapping almost all the way around the head. A dragonfly sees nearly a full sphere at once, which is much of why it catches most of what it chases.
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The fastest bird in a dive is the...
Answer Peregrine falcon
The peregrine falcon, which exceeds 300 kilometers an hour in a stoop. That makes it the fastest animal of any kind, though in level flight several birds beat it.
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Cicada nymphs spend years living...
Answer Underground
Underground, feeding on root sap. Some species stay there for thirteen or seventeen years — both prime numbers, which makes it hard for any predator to sync its own cycle to theirs.
Records & Superpowers
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The fastest land animal is the...
Answer Cheetah
The cheetah, built entirely around the sprint: a flexible spine, semi-retractable claws for grip and an oversized heart. The cost is that it overheats within a minute and often loses its kill to larger predators afterward.
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Which shark is thought to live for around 400 years?
Answer The Greenland shark
The Greenland shark, dated by the lenses of its eyes to around four centuries. It does not even reach breeding age until roughly 150, which is older than most animals ever get.
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The largest bird on Earth is the...
Answer Ostrich
The ostrich, up to about 2.8 meters and 150 kilograms. It also lays the largest egg of any living bird — one is equivalent to roughly two dozen chicken eggs.
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The largest land animal is the...
Answer African elephant
The African elephant, up to around six tonnes. Its ears are not just for hearing: they are laced with blood vessels and flapping them sheds heat.
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Which animal famously sleeps around 20 hours a day?
Answer The koala
The koala, at around twenty hours. Sleep is a way of saving energy on a diet that provides very little of it, not a sign of laziness.
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Ruppell's vulture holds which bird record?
Answer Highest recorded flight
Highest recorded flight — one was struck by an aircraft at about 11,300 meters, higher than a passenger jet's cruising altitude. Its blood carries a form of hemoglobin that works in air that thin.
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Which land animal can live for more than 150 years?
Answer The Galapagos giant tortoise
The Galapagos giant tortoise, with individuals documented past 150 and probably beyond. Their slow metabolism and lack of natural predators on the islands both play a part.
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Which animal's tongue can stretch as long as its body?
Answer The chameleon
The chameleon, which fires its tongue in about a hundredth of a second. The launch is powered by elastic tissue released like a catapult, not by muscle contracting in the moment.
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One of the smallest mammals in the world is the...
Answer Bumblebee bat
The bumblebee bat, weighing about two grams — roughly the same as a coin. It competes with the Etruscan shrew for the title, depending on whether you measure by weight or by length.
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Which insect can jump more than 100 times its body length?
Answer The flea
The flea, over a hundred times its own length. The jump uses a pad of elastic protein that stores energy and releases it far faster than muscle alone could.
Hard Mode
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Which of these is NOT true of the platypus?
Answer It has scales
The platypus has fur, not scales. It also lays eggs, senses electric fields with its bill, and the males carry a venomous spur — which is why early European naturalists assumed the first specimen was a hoax.
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What color is a polar bear's skin under the fur?
Answer Black
Black, which absorbs heat well. The fur is not white either: each hair is hollow and transparent, and it looks white for the same reason snow does — it scatters light.
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Flamingos are pink because of...
Answer Pigments in their food
Pigments called carotenoids, taken in through the algae and shrimp they eat. A flamingo fed a different diet fades to pale gray, and chicks hatch gray before their food colors them.
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A cow's stomach is divided into how many chambers?
Answer Four
Four, though only one is a true stomach. The others ferment plant material with the help of microbes, and the cud a cow chews is that material brought back up for a second pass.
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Counting the nerve centers in its arms, an octopus is often said to have how many brains?
Answer Nine
Nine, in the loose sense: one central brain plus a large cluster of neurons in each of the eight arms. Most of an octopus's neurons are in the arms, and a severed arm can still react on its own.
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A hummingbird's heart can beat up to about how many times a minute?
Answer 1,200
Around 1,200 beats a minute in flight. At night some species drop into torpor, letting the heart rate and body temperature fall dramatically to survive until morning.
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Dogs sweat mainly through their...
Answer Paw pads
The paw pads, which is far too little surface to matter. Dogs shed heat mainly by panting, moving air over the wet surfaces of the mouth and lungs.
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An African elephant's pregnancy lasts about...
Answer 22 months
About 22 months, the longest pregnancy of any land animal. The length is tied to brain development: a calf is born able to walk and already recognizing members of its herd.
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Sea otters sleeping at sea often...
Answer Wrap themselves in kelp
They wrap themselves in kelp so the current does not carry them off. Otters also hold hands while sleeping in groups, which serves the same purpose.
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In a lion pride, most of the hunting is done by...
Answer The females
The lionesses do most of it, usually cooperatively. The males' size makes them poor stalkers but useful at defending the territory and the kill from rival prides and hyenas.
About the Animal Quiz
Animals are the first subject almost everyone becomes an expert in. At six years old a child can rank predators by bite force and name a dozen species of shark, and then school arrives with other priorities and the whole library goes into storage. What survives into adulthood is a strange mixture — a few accurate facts, a lot of half-remembered documentary narration, and a surprising number of confident statements that turn out to be folklore.
This animal quiz runs fifty questions in five rounds of ten: mammals, ocean life, birds and bugs, records and superpowers, and a hard round. Four options each, with the answer revealed as you choose. There are no photographs anywhere in it — a picture quiz measures how well you recognize a species on sight, which is a different skill and a much narrower one. These questions ask what you know about the animals instead.
The hard round is where the folklore gets dealt with directly, which is why several of its questions are phrased the awkward way round and ask which of four statements is not true. Being asked to spot a false animal fact is uncomfortable in a way that ordinary recall is not, because the false ones have usually been repeated more often, and more confidently, than the true ones.
How it works
- Four options, no timer. Nothing here rewards answering quickly.
- The verdict appears the instant you choose, and a wrong pick leaves the right answer up for a moment, which is long enough to be annoyed about it. A tap anywhere takes you onward.
- Rounds change every ten questions, working out from the familiar mammals to the ocean, the air, the record-holders and finally the hard round.
- You finish with a mark out of fifty and a round-by-round breakdown — the five rounds are written to ask for different kinds of knowledge, which is why the breakdown is there at all.
- All fifty questions and their answers are listed below, and the ones you got wrong are marked there once you reach the end.
Frequently asked questions
Are the record answers still accurate?
The ones we chose are the stable ones. Superlatives in biology move around more than people expect — a longevity record shifts when someone works out how to age a species properly, and a speed record shifts when someone finally measures it in the wild rather than in a chase. Where a figure is genuinely disputed we left the question out and kept the records that have held for decades.
Why are there no pictures of the animals?
Because it would quietly turn into a different quiz. Show a photograph and you are testing visual recognition, which rewards having seen a lot of nature programs; ask a question in words and you are testing what you understood about the animal. Both are legitimate, but mixing them makes a set where half your score comes from a skill the other half never touches.
A lot of famous animal facts turn out to be myths. How did you handle that?
By staying on questions with a settled answer, and by putting the myths in the hard round as direct challenges rather than sneaking them in as wrong options elsewhere. If a popular claim is a simplification rather than an outright error, it is not in the set at all — those make terrible four-option questions, because the popular answer is defensible and the marking has to pretend otherwise.
Is it suitable for children?
The first three rounds especially. Nothing in the set is distressing — no hunting, no gore, nothing about extinction framed to upset anyone — and those thirty are written on what a child in their animal phase already has fresh, so being the youngest in the room is no handicap there. The records and hard rounds assume a bit more patience.
How many should someone who likes animals get?
Thirty is a strong result for an adult who likes animals without studying them. Above forty usually means the ocean round did not slow you down, which is the one that separates people who watched the documentaries from people who read afterwards.
Is the Animal Quiz free, and do I need an account or an app?
Free, with no account and no email, and there is no app to install — open the page and it starts. Marking happens here, so nothing you answer is sent anywhere. If you are handing a device to a child, there is no field anywhere that asks them to type in anything about themselves.
How long does the Animal Quiz take?
Around eight minutes for the fifty, less if a child is doing the first three rounds because they rarely stop to think. There is no timer and no penalty for pausing, and the answer list below means a question that started an argument can be settled without replaying.