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Animal Trivia Questions for Kids and Families
From baby goats to stripy tigers, here are thirty animal trivia questions with answers, going from easy to hard, that kids and grown-ups can enjoy together.
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Easy animal trivia questions for kids
1.What is a baby frog called?
A tadpole. Tadpoles breathe with gills and lose their tails as they turn into frogs.
2.How many arms does a starfish usually have?
Five. Some kinds of starfish, also called sea stars, have 20 or more.
3.Which animal is called the king of the jungle?
The lion. Lions actually live mostly on grasslands and savannas, not in jungles.
4.Which big cat has an orange coat with black stripes?
The tiger. Like a human fingerprint, no two tigers have exactly the same stripes.
5.What is the largest bird in the world?
The ostrich. Ostriches lay the biggest eggs of any living bird.
6.Which lizard is famous for changing its color?
The chameleon. A chameleon can also move each of its eyes in a different direction.
7.What is a baby goat called?
A kid. Female goats are called does, and males are called bucks.
8.What is a group of wolves called?
A pack. A wolf pack is a family group, and wolves howl to warn other packs away.
9.What do we call an animal that eats mainly plants?
An herbivore. Herbivores come in all sizes, from tiny bugs to tall giraffes.
10.Is a dolphin a fish or a mammal?
A mammal. Dolphins breathe air through a blowhole on top of the head and feed their babies milk.
11.Do wild polar bears live near the North Pole or the South Pole?
The North Pole (in the Arctic). Under their thick fur, polar bears have black skin.
12.Which flying insects flash little lights on summer evenings?
Fireflies. Fireflies aren't flies at all. They are beetles, and they make their light in the abdomen.
Medium animal trivia questions
13.What is a group of fish swimming together called?
A school (or a shoal). Swimming in a school helps fish stay safe from predators.
14.What does a camel store in its hump?
Fat. The fat can be turned into energy when food is hard to find.
15.Ants live on every continent except which one?
Antarctica. Scientists have described more than 12,000 kinds of ants.
16.The Komodo dragon, the world's largest lizard, lives in the wild only in which country?
Indonesia. It smells with its forked tongue and can sniff out food about 4 km (2.5 miles) away.
17.Which small flightless bird, a national symbol of New Zealand, has nostrils at the tip of its long beak?
The kiwi. Kiwi come out mostly at night and find food by smell.
18.Wild lemurs live only on which large island and a few small islands nearby?
Madagascar. Ring-tailed lemurs hold their striped tails high so their group can spot them.
19.In seahorses, which parent carries the eggs in a pouch until the babies are born?
The father. Seahorses have no teeth and no stomach to store food, so they eat tiny plankton almost all day.
20.A shark's skeleton is not made of bone. What is it made of?
Cartilage. It's the same bendy stuff that is in your ears and the tip of your nose.
21.The narwhal's long, spiral tusk is actually a giant what?
A tooth. Narwhals live in the icy Arctic and are nicknamed the unicorns of the sea.
22.What is the world's largest rodent, a strong swimmer from South America?
The capybara. Its eyes, ears and nostrils sit high on its head, so it can hide in water and still breathe.
Hard animal trivia questions for adults
23.Which mammal of Africa and Asia is covered in scales and rolls into a ball when it feels threatened?
The pangolin. Its scales are made of keratin, the same material as your fingernails.
24.What tiny eight-legged animals, nicknamed water bears, can survive being dried out for years?
Tardigrades. Dried out, they curl into a ball called a tun and can come back to life within hours of getting wet.
25.Which forest animal with zebra-like striped legs is the closest living relative of the giraffe?
The okapi. It lives in rainforests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and grabs leaves with its long tongue.
26.Which seabird flies from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back every year?
The Arctic tern. It follows the summer at both ends of the Earth, so it gets to see two summers a year.
27.Which Pacific islands off Ecuador were named after the giant tortoises that live there?
The Galapagos Islands. Galapagos tortoises are among the longest-lived land animals, often living more than 100 years.
28.What is the scientific study of birds called?
Ornithology. Museums keep bird skins, eggs and nests so scientists can study how bird populations change.
29.Which Mexican salamander keeps its feathery gills its whole life and can regrow a lost leg?
The axolotl. In the wild, it lives only in the Xochimilco lake area near Mexico City.
30.Scientists thought this lobe-finned fish had died out long ago, until a live one was caught off South Africa in 1938. What is it?
The coelacanth. Its fleshy lobe fins move in an alternating pattern as it swims.
Ways to use these animal questions
Read a few of these aloud on the walk between zoo exhibits, then see who can be first to spot the animal from the answer. They also make a quick warm-up for a science class studying habitats or life cycles, since the tadpole, seahorse and axolotl questions lead straight into talk about how animals grow and change. On a road trip, let kids keep a tally of how many answers are mammals, birds, reptiles or fish. Pet owners can add a bonus round about their own dog or cat, and the tougher questions on okapis, tardigrades and coelacanths make a fair challenge for the family's resident animal expert.
Play Animals trivia together
Room Trivia has a whole animals category with different questions: four answers to pick from, points for speed, and a scoreboard. Put it on a TV or laptop and everyone answers on their own phone. Free, with no app and no account.