Which animal has more than one heart? Are killer whales really whales? How many arms does an octopus have? Animal trivia questions like these are perfect class activities for children; they’re even a great game for friends and family to play on a road trip or at home.
If you’re into these, below are more than 50 of these fun animal trivia questions and answers that will test your animal knowledge. Can you answer correctly?
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62 Animal Trivia Questions and Answers
Test your knowledge of the natural world with these fun animal trivia questions and answers!
Animal Trivia Questions – Mammals
What is the slowest animal on land?
Answer: The sloth
What is the female deer called?
Answer: The doe.
What is the fastest land animal?
Answer: The cheetah.
How many dogs are there in a pack of African wild dogs?
Answer: Two to 40. The most successful packs, however, have around seven to 15 pack members.
What are baby kangaroos called?
Answer: Joeys.
How many toes does a guinea pig have?
Answer: 14 in total. They have four toes on their front feet and three toes on their back feet.
Which animal has the highest blood pressure?
Answer: The giraffe. The blood pressure of giraffes measures 280/180 mm Hg, which is two times higher than ours!
How many species of wild cats are there?
Answer: 41.
What does the bat use to navigate and locate its prey?
Answer: Echolocation. It sends out a series of high-frequency sound waves that humans can’t hear – the ultrasound.
The sound waves bounce back when it hits an object, and bats use their ears to receive the returning sound waves, make out where things are in their path, and find their prey.
What is the largest land mammal?
Answer: The African bush elephant. The largest African bush elephant weighed 10.4 tonnes. Males are called bulls, and their shoulder height is around 13 feet (4 meters).
Females are called cows and have a shoulder height of around 11 feet (3.4 meters).
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What is the smallest mammal?
Answer: The Kitti’s hog-nosed bat. Also known as the bumblebee bat, it’s only about an inch (2.9 to 3.3 mm) long and weighs only 0.02 ounces (1.7 grams).
Does a male lion join the hunt?
Answer: Yes. Even though lionesses lead most hunts, male lions do join the hunt from time to time, especially when the pride aims to take down larger prey, such as a buffalo, giraffe, a hippo, and even an elephant.
What is a female elephant called?
Answer: A cow. A male elephant is called a bull.
Which mammal found in Australia is venomous?
Answer: The male duck-billed platypus. It’s got half-inch spurs on each of its hind legs that can inject venom. They use this weapon when defending themselves or fighting with other males during mating season.
The venom is very powerful and can kill animals larger than platypuses, including dogs. It can’t kill humans, but it will be extremely painful if you get hit by the spur.
How do vampire bats drink blood?
Answer: They lap it up. Contrary to popular belief, vampire bats don’t just sink their pointy teeth into prey and suck blood. In reality, they create a wound on their target with a bite, then lap up the blood that flows out.
Its saliva contains draculin (yes, named after Count Dracula), which keeps the blood from clotting to drink blood without interruptions.
Vampire bats need only 20 grams of blood per night, and they usually go for large mammals like cows, horses, and pigs, so you don’t have to worry about them killing animals during their feast.
What is the smallest cat in the big cat family?
Answer: The rusty-spotted cat. At only 3 pounds (1.3 kg) with a length of about 17 inches (43 cm), it’s around the same size as domestic cats.
What is a female tiger called?
Answer: A tigress or tiger.
Animal Trivia Questions – Reptiles
What determines the gender of baby sea turtles?
Answer: The temperature. A baby boy turtle is born if the egg is incubated below 81.86° Fahrenheit (27.7° Celsius), while a baby girl turtle is born if the temperature is over 87.8° Fahrenheit (31° Celsius).
Are snakes poisonous?
Answer: No. There is no such thing as a poisonous snake. Some snakes are venomous, and some are not.
The difference between being poisonous and being venomous is whether an injection is needed. If an animal is poisonous, it releases toxins as a self-defense mechanism (like when you eat it or attack it), like poisonous frogs and insects, and you could be poisoned by simply touching the poison.
On the other hand, if an animal is venomous, it has to be injected through a sting or bite into a wound, like venomous snakes or scorpions, and you won’t get poisoned if you touch or even touch drink their venom.
Want to learn more about the natural world! Quiz the kids on these 50 awesome science trivia questions!
Does a Komodo dragon produce venom?
Answer: Yes. It’s long been believed that Komodo dragons use the bacteria in their mouths as venom, but in fact, they do have venom glands and produce venom themselves that causes you to bleed a lot and stops blood from blotting.
Why do chameleons change the color of their skin?
Answer: Mostly to regulate temperatures and to communicate with other chameleons. As cold-blooded animals, chameleons can’t produce body heat and so they rely on the sun.
They could change to a darker shade to absorb more heat from the sun, and if it’s too hot, they could switch to a lighter shade to reflect sunlight.
They also change colors to communicate with other chameleons. For example, females use neutral colors to let a pursuing male know that she’s not interested and use bright colors to indicate she’s available.
Contrary to popular belief, they don’t really use this ability to match the environment.
What are the skin cells that allow chameleons to change colors called?
Answer: Chromatophores. Chameleons have many layers of them on their skin.
Animal Trivia Questions – Birds
What is a male swan called?
Answer: A cob.
What is the fastest bird in the world?
Answer: The peregrine falcon. When it’s diving or stooping to hunt, its speed could reach 186 mph (299 kph)!
How many feathers are there in a peacock’s tail?
Answer: 200 on average.
What is the largest living bird?
Answer: The ostrich. Male ostriches can grow to 9 feet (2.7 meters) tall and weigh up to 280 pounds (127 kg), and females can grow to be as tall as 6 feet (1.8 meters) and weigh up to 200 pounds (90 kg).
How long can a bald eagle live?
Answer: 20 to 30 years in the wild, though they can live even longer in captivity.
What is the most endangered bird in the world?
Answer: The kakapo. A native to New Zealand, it’s also called the owl parrot. It’s also a type of flightless bird.
There are only 201 kakapos left alive today, but New Zealand is putting in a lot of effort to help recover the population.
Animal Trivia Questions – Ocean Mammals
What is the color of a polar bear’s skin?
Answer: Black. The black color can better absorb the sun’s warm rays, helping polar bears stay warm more easily in freezing temperatures.
How far away can the sound of a blue whale be heard?
Answer: Over 500 miles (800 kilometers). However, much of the sound’s wavelength is outside the human’s hearing range, so we can only hear part of it.
What kind of animal is a killer whale (orca)?
Answer: A dolphin. Orcas are actually classified as dolphins. They’re called whales because of their large size.
What is the largest animal in the world?
Answer: The Antarctic blue whale. They can grow to weigh 400,000 pounds (181,437 kg), which is as heavy as 33 African elephants. Plus, Antarctic blue whales can be as long as 98 feet (30 meters)!
How do dolphins find prey?
Answer: Echolocation. Just like radars, dolphins produce and send out a series of clicks that bounce back from objects, including their prey. When they receive the returning clicks, they use that information to find prey.
Animal Trivia Questions – Ocean Animals
How many arms do squids have?
Answer: 10. They have eight arms and two longer ones that are called tentacles.
What is the fastest animal in the ocean?
Answer: The sailfish. It can reach 68 mph in the water.
How many bones does an octopus have?
Answer: Zero. The only hard structure it has is a beak, but that doesn’t count as a bone.
What is something that sharks can sense but humans cannot?
Answer: Electric fields. Like rays and other predators in the ocean, sharks can sense small electric fields with a unique organ called the ampullae of Lorenzini (located on the snout).
This organ allows them to sense the tiny amount of electricity generated by muscles moving, and they use this ability to find prey.
What is the largest fish in the ocean?
Answer: The whale shark. Also known as the gentle giants of the sea, whale sharks can grow to as long as 39 feet (almost 12 meters). They eat only plankton.
Which animal eats jellyfish?
Answer: Sea turtles.
Animal Trivia Questions – Amphibians
What is the color of the most poisonous frog in the world?
Answer: Yellow. The most poisonous frog in the world is the golden poison frog from Colombia.
How many eggs can female frogs lay at a time?
Answer: Up to 4,000. Even though it varies from species to species, female frogs can lay up to that many in one sitting.
What kind of animal uses its skin to breathe?
Answer: The frog. Other than their lungs, frogs can also use their skin for breathing.
Looking for more ways to pass the time? Check out these fun facts for kids. The list covers animals, geography and so much more!
Which type of frog freezes during winter to hibernate?
Answer: The wood frog. Usually, when animals freeze, pointy ice crystals form inside their bodies, and these crystals puncture their cells and organs, killing them in the process.
However, the wood frog has natural antifreeze in its blood that prevents deadly ice crystals from forming in its center to protect vital organs, so it can survive the entire winter frozen, or rather, 60% frozen.
Animal Trivia Questions – Insects
What are male honey bees called?
Answer: Drones. They’re bigger than workers, and their only function is to mate with a queen bee.
How many noses does a slug have?
Answer: Four. Two are responsible for touching and tasting, while the other two control sight and smell. All four can move in different directions and are retractable.
What kind of society do bees have?
Answer: A democratic one. It was recently discovered that bees make big decisions together. For example, when they are thinking about moving, they send scouts to search for ideal new places to move, and after they come back to tell other fellow bees, they vote and decide together whether they want to move.
What do fireflies eat?
Answer: Mainly nectar and pollen, but some also eat other fireflies. Its larvae are predators and eat mainly snails, slugs, and worms.
Farm Animal Trivia Questions
How many compartments do cows have in their stomach?
Answer: Four. The cow’s stomach (or stomachs) allows them to swallow grass, even if it hasn’t been adequately chewed.
They store the food in the first two compartments to break it down before regurgitating and rechewing it later.
What is the smartest farm animal?
Answer: Pigs. Contrary to common beliefs, pigs are not only one of the smartest farm animals, but they are also actually one of the most intelligent animals in the animal kingdom.
They have the intelligence of a 3-year old child and are faster learners than dogs and primates. It’s even a popular household pet.
Do dogs sweat?
Answer: Yes, but mainly only through their paw pads, where their sweat glands are. Other than their paws, they also use their tongues to cool off.
What is a baby goat called?
Answer: A kid.
Animal Trivia Questions – The Only Animal…
What is the only big cat that lives in groups?
Answer: The lion. A group of lions is called a pride.
What are the only birds that can fly backward?
Answer: Hummingbirds. They can even fly upside down!
What is the only mammal that can fly?
Answer: The bat.
What are the only two mammals that lay eggs?
Answer: The duck-billed platypus and the echidna. Both of these animals are in Australia.
Animal Trivia Questions – How Many Legs…
How many legs does an octopus have?
Answer: Eight. Each of its tentacles has a mini-brain of its own to move somewhat on its own.
How many legs does a centipede have?
Answer: 10 to 300 legs.
How many legs does a scorpion have?
Answer: Eight. That includes its pincers and the six legs it uses to walk.
Other Animal Trivia Questions
What do you call animals that spend most of their lifetime on trees?
Answer: Arboreal animals. The word “arboreal” comes from the Latin word “arbor,” which means “tree.”
What do you call animals that eat mostly meat?
Answer: Carnivores. The word “carnivore” comes from the Latin word “caro” and “carn-,“ meaning “flesh.”
What do you call animals that eat mostly plants?
Answer: Herbivores. The word “herbivore” comes from the Latin word “herba,” which means “plant” and”herb.”
What do you call animals that eat everything (meat, plant, and others)?
Answer: Omnivores. This word comes from the Latin word “omni,” which means “all” and “everything.”
How Did You Do?
Did you learn anything new about animals? Or are you an animal scholar and had a correct answer for every question? For more fun facts about animals, visit the Great Wolf Lodge blog.
There, you can find more trivia questions and answers along with other exciting activities. So challenge your family and friends to an animal trivia quiz, and have fun learning together!
