97 Fun Facts About Animal Trivia for Kids

Which animal is the fastest runner on land?

A cheetah can sprint at around 60 miles per hour, faster than any other animal on land. It can only keep that speed up for about half a minute before it has to stop and rest.

What is the largest animal that has ever lived on Earth?

Blue whales grow up to about 100 feet long and can weigh as much as 200 tons. No dinosaur we know of ever got that big.

Which animal is the tallest one alive on land today?

A giraffe's long neck lifts its head far above every other land animal. That height lets it reach leaves near the tops of trees that nothing else can nibble.

How many hearts does an octopus have?

One main heart pumps blood around the body, and two smaller hearts push blood through the gills. The number eight belongs to its arms, not its hearts.

Which animals are the only mammals that can truly fly?

Bats flap their wings and stay in the air as long as they like. Flying squirrels, sugar gliders and colugos only glide downwards using flaps of skin.

What is a baby kangaroo called?

A joey is tiny when it is born and finishes growing inside its mother's pouch, called a marsupium.

Which bird is the heaviest and largest in the world?

An ostrich can weigh over 300 pounds and lays the biggest eggs of any living land animal. It cannot fly, but it can run about 43 miles per hour.

What does a camel really store inside its hump?

The hump is a big store of fatty tissue the camel can burn for energy when food is hard to find. Lots of people think it holds water, but it does not.

What do we call a group of lions living together?

A pride is made up of related lionesses, their cubs, and a small number of adult males.

The tallest and heaviest penguin lives only on which continent?

The emperor penguin is the biggest penguin of all, and it is found nowhere on Earth except Antarctica.

What is the smallest bird in the world?

The bee hummingbird of Cuba is only about 2.4 inches long and weighs roughly 2 grams, which is lighter than a single coin.

How many legs does a spider have?

Spiders are arthropods with eight limbs. Insects such as ants and beetles have six, which is one way to tell them apart.

How many arms do most starfish have?

Most starfish have five arms spreading out from a middle disc, though some species grow many more.

Which of these sea creatures is a mammal, not a fish?

Dolphins are aquatic mammals. They breathe air through a blowhole and feed their babies milk, while sharks and tuna are fish that use gills.

Which animal is the heaviest one living on land?

The African bush elephant is the heaviest land animal alive: a fully grown bull stands about 10 to 11 feet at the shoulder and weighs around 6 tons.

About how often does a sloth climb down from its tree to poop?

A sloth comes down about once every eight days, roughly once a week, to poop at the base of its tree. The slow, exposed trip is one of the most dangerous things it ever does.

Why are flamingos pink?

Flamingos are pink because of pigments in the food they eat: carotenoids in the plankton and brine shrimp they filter from the water. A flamingo on a poor diet turns pale.

Which lizard can point each of its eyes in a different direction at the same time?

A chameleon's eyes move independently, so one can watch for danger while the other tracks a bug. Its tongue can then shoot out up to about twice its body length in a fraction of a second.

In emperor penguins, who keeps the egg warm through the Antarctic winter?

The male tucks the egg under a flap of skin and stands through the winter for over two months while the female is out at sea feeding.

Which of these can an elephant NOT do?

Jumping, trotting and galloping are all off the table because an elephant's legs are built for carrying weight; it can swim for hours, though.

How does a honey bee, back from foraging, tell the rest of the hive which direction the flowers are in?

By doing a dance, the 'waggle dance', a bee encodes the direction and distance of the food; a queen bee, meanwhile, can lay up to 2,000 eggs in a single day.

A koala is not really a bear, so what kind of animal is it?

A koala is a marsupial: like kangaroos, koala mothers carry their babies in a pouch, and a koala can sleep as much as 20 hours a day.

About how many teeth does a great white shark have in its mouth at once?

A great white shark has about 300 teeth in its mouth at once, set in rows like a conveyor belt; new ones move forward to replace any that break or fall out.

How far can an owl turn its head?

An owl can turn its head about 270 degrees because its eyes are fixed in their sockets and cannot swivel the way ours do; 14 neck vertebrae, twice ours, make the twist possible.

What colour is a polar bear's skin under all that white fur?

The dark skin soaks up warmth from the sun, and the fur on top is actually see-through rather than white.

Which animal can regrow a whole leg if it loses one?

The axolotl, a salamander from lakes near Mexico City, can regrow a whole leg, and it keeps its feathery gills its whole life instead of growing out of them.

Which animal has the densest fur of any creature on Earth?

The sea otter has the densest fur of any animal, up to about 150,000 hairs per square centimetre, and it cracks shellfish open by hammering them on a rock balanced on its chest.

Are any two zebras striped exactly the same?

No two zebras share a pattern: every zebra's stripes are unique, like a fingerprint, and one leading idea is that the stripes confuse biting flies.

Which is the only kind of bird that can fly backwards?

The hummingbird is the only bird that can truly fly backwards: its wings rotate like helicopter blades, and its heart can beat more than 1,200 times a minute while it hovers at a flower.

Which of these furry animals lays eggs instead of giving birth to live babies?

The platypus is one of only five living mammal species that lay eggs; the other four are all echidnas. When the first specimen reached Britain, scientists suspected a hoax.

In which fish does the dad carry the eggs in a special pouch until the babies are born?

In seahorses the female puts her eggs into the male's pouch, and he keeps them safe until hundreds of tiny babies pop out; up to about 1,500 eggs can go into one pouch.

How many compartments does a cow's stomach have?

A cow's stomach has four compartments: rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum. Grass is hard to digest, so a cow swallows it, brings it back up as cud, chews it again and sends it through each part in turn.

Jonathan, named the oldest known land animal in 2022, is what kind of animal?

Jonathan is a Seychelles giant tortoise kept at Plantation House, the governor's residence on the island of Saint Helena; Guinness World Records put his age at about 190 in 2022.

Which country is the small flightless kiwi bird from?

Kiwi are found only in New Zealand and are its national symbol, which is why New Zealanders are nicknamed Kiwis. For its size, the kiwi lays one of the biggest eggs of any bird.

About 99 percent of a giant panda's food is which plant?

Bamboo is about 99 percent of a giant panda's diet. Though related to meat-eating bears, a panda munches more than 20 pounds of bamboo a day and, because it holds so little nourishment, eats for most of the day.

When a snake flicks its forked tongue in and out, what is it mostly doing?

Smelling the air: the tongue picks up tiny particles and delivers them to Jacobson's organ in the roof of the mouth, and the fork tells the snake which side a smell comes from.

What is a baby frog called when it hatches from its egg and lives in the water?

A tadpole starts life with a tail and gills like a fish, then grows legs, loses the tail and climbs out onto land. This big change is called metamorphosis.

Which part of its body does a butterfly use to taste things?

A butterfly tastes with its feet: taste sensors there let it check on landing whether a plant is the right one to lay eggs on, so its caterpillars have the right food when they hatch.

What is unusual about a rabbit's teeth?

All that chewing on grass and hay wears the teeth down, so they keep growing to make up for it. That is why pet rabbits need things to gnaw on.

Which of these animals can take a nap while standing up?

A horse can doze standing up because a 'stay apparatus' of tendons and ligaments locks its legs in place, handy for bolting from predators in the wild. For deep sleep a horse still lies down.

What is a group of crows called?

A group of crows is called a murder, a name from old English folklore that linked crows with death. Crows are among the smartest birds: they use tools and remember the faces of people who bother them.

What do a cat's whiskers help it do?

Whiskers can sense objects and even tiny air currents, so a cat knows whether it can squeeze through a gap without seeing it. Most cats sleep 12 to 16 hours a day.

Which bird dives at over 320 km/h to catch its prey, making it the fastest animal on Earth?

The peregrine falcon soars high and then plunges in a steep 'stoop', striking one wing of its prey so it does not hurt itself on impact.

Which fish is generally thought to be the fastest swimmer in the ocean?

The sailfish is usually named the fastest fish in the sea, often credited with bursts near 100 km/h; its sail-like dorsal fin can run the whole length of its back, and marlins are its close cousins.

Which Australian animal leaves cube-shaped poop?

Wombats produce the cubes thanks to stretchy and stiff patches in their intestines, and in 2019 the scientists who explained it won an Ig Nobel Prize.

Fireflies and lightning bugs glow in the dark, but what kind of insect are they really?

There are more than 2,400 species, and they flash mostly at twilight to attract mates.

What is the biggest fish in the world?

The whale shark is the biggest fish alive; the largest confirmed one measured about 18.8 metres. Despite its size it is a gentle, slow-moving filter feeder that sieves plankton and tiny fish.

A snail's tongue, called a radula, is covered in thousands of tiny what?

A snail's radula is a ribbon set with thousands of tiny teeth made of chitin; it works like a file, scraping food into small pieces, and worn teeth are replaced from behind.

What is a baby goat called?

A baby goat is a kid, a word that came into English from the Old Norse 'kið'; a mother goat giving birth is said to be kidding.

What is a baby swan called?

It comes from the Latin word cygnus plus a French ending meaning 'little', so a cygnet is literally a 'little swan'.

Which animal's skin oozes a red 'blood sweat' that works like sunscreen?

A hippopotamus oozes a red, oily 'blood sweat' whose pigments, hipposudoric and norhipposudoric acid, block ultraviolet light and fight bacteria; the skin cracks anyway if the hippo stays out of water too long.

Which animals are the hippo's closest living relatives?

Despite looking like giant pigs, hippos split from the whale line about 55 million years ago, and their blood proteins and DNA give it away.

Which are the only large mammals that get around mainly by hopping on two legs?

A red kangaroo cruises at about 20–25 km/h but can hit 70 km/h in short bursts.

What do Dalmatian puppies look like when they are born?

Dalmatian puppies are born plain white; their first spots usually appear within about two weeks, though faint spots can sometimes already be seen on the skin at birth.

What is a male duck called?

A male duck is a drake, while the female is simply a duck or hen. A gander is a male goose, a cob a male swan and a rooster a male chicken.

Which Arctic fish can live over 270 years, longer than any other animal with a backbone?

The Greenland shark is the longest-lived vertebrate known: eye-lens dating published in 2016 put one female at roughly 390 years old, and they grow so slowly that females are not mature until about 150.

A narwhal's long spiral tusk is really a giant what?

The narwhal's tusk is a tooth, usually the left upper canine, which grows in a spiral straight out through the lip to as much as 3 metres. A few males grow two.

Why are a beaver's front teeth orange?

Iron makes the enamel extra hard, so the teeth wear down unevenly and stay sharp like a chisel.

What is the largest rodent alive today?

The capybara is the largest living rodent, weighing up to about 65 kg; it lives in every South American country except Chile and is famously relaxed around other animals.

Which is the biggest lizard in the world, growing up to 3 metres long?

The Komodo dragon is the largest living lizard, about 3 metres long and usually around 70 to 90 kg, with the heaviest record well over 100 kg; it lives only on a few Indonesian islands such as Komodo and Rinca.

Which South American snake is the heaviest in the world?

The green anaconda is the heaviest snake; biologist Jesús Rivas, who has measured more than a thousand, recorded a female of 97.5 kg. The reticulated python grows longer but is far slimmer.

Which small seabird flies from the far north to the Antarctic and back every single year?

The Arctic tern makes the longest migration known: one tagged on England's Farne Islands in 2015 covered about 96,000 km in ten months between the Arctic and the Antarctic.

Which bird has the biggest wingspan of any bird alive, up to 3.7 metres?

The wandering albatross has the largest wingspan of any living bird, commonly about 3 metres and in one record 3.7 metres; it can glide for hours over the Southern Ocean barely flapping.

How do most frogs take in the water they need?

The skin also helps them breathe and control body temperature, but it lets water out just as easily.

A rhinoceros horn is made of the same stuff as which part of your body?

The horn has no bony core and grows throughout the animal's life, much like a nail.

In Malay, the name 'orangutan' means what?

The words are orang (person) and hutan (forest); these great apes live only in the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia.

Which dog breed is the fastest, reaching nearly 70 km/h on the race track?

The greyhound is the fastest dog breed, clocked at about 70 km/h on the track; at full sprint all four feet leave the ground twice in every stride, a gait called the double suspension gallop.

Many female sea turtles come back to lay their eggs in which spot?

Most female sea turtles return to lay their eggs on the beach where they hatched, sometimes decades later; scientists think they find it by sensing Earth's magnetic field like a built-in compass.

Salmon swim out to sea as adults, then swim back to which place to lay their eggs?

Tracking studies show most really do find their own home stream, though a few stray into other rivers.

Which bird is the national bird of the United States?

The bald eagle has appeared on the Great Seal of the United States since 1782; in films its rather squeaky call is usually dubbed with the louder scream of a red-tailed hawk.

Which bird is famous for laying its eggs in other birds' nests?

The unsuspecting host raises the chick as its own, which is where the phrase 'cuckoo's egg' comes from.

Which Australian bird can copy chainsaws, car alarms and camera shutters?

The superb lyrebird is a master mimic, copying chainsaws, car alarms and camera shutters as well as other birds' calls; the male also fans out a spectacular lyre-shaped tail during courtship.

The kākāpō of New Zealand is the world's only parrot that cannot do what?

The kākāpō is the only parrot that cannot fly, though it climbs trees well. It is also the heaviest parrot and comes out at night, which is why its Māori name means 'night parrot'.

Which animals are the red panda's closest living relatives?

The red panda is the only member of its own family, Ailuridae, whose nearest relatives are raccoons, weasels and skunks; it shares a 'false thumb' with the unrelated giant panda for gripping bamboo.

Which striped-legged animal from the Congo is the only living relative of the giraffe?

The okapi, found in the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is the giraffe's only living relative; its zebra-like leg stripes fooled people for years, and it was only scientifically described in 1901.

Which small sea creature throws a punch so fast it makes bubbles pop in the water?

The peacock mantis shrimp's club strikes with about 1,500 newtons of force, so fast that it creates cavitation bubbles whose collapse hits the prey a second time.

Why does the fennec fox of the Sahara have such enormous ears?

It is the smallest fox in the world, and its kidneys are tuned to survive on very little water.

Which Arctic giant may live for more than 200 years, longer than any other mammal?

The bowhead whale is the longest-lived mammal, with one estimated at over 200 years old; stone and ivory harpoon tips found in living animals prove some were swimming around in the 1800s.

Instead of bones, a shark's skeleton is made of what?

A shark's skeleton is made of cartilage, the same bendy material that shapes your ears and nose; it is lighter and more flexible than bone, which helps the shark stay buoyant.

Clownfish make their home among the stinging tentacles of which animal?

In return for a safe hideout the fish chase off anemone-eating fish and keep their host clean.

Up to how many volts can an electric eel deliver in a single shock?

The strongest electric eel, Electrophorus voltai, described in 2019, delivers shocks of up to 860 volts; despite the name it is not a true eel but a knifefish from South America.

In which deer can the females grow antlers as well as the males?

Reindeer, called caribou in North America, are the only deer in which females grow antlers too; males begin theirs in spring and shed them after the autumn rut, while females keep theirs through winter.

Which is the tallest and heaviest kind of deer alive today?

The moose is the biggest deer alive: a bull can stand about 2 metres at the shoulder and weigh more than 600 kg, well ahead of the elk, the next-largest deer.

Which animal is the lightest mammal on Earth, weighing about as much as a paperclip?

The Etruscan shrew weighs about 1.8 grams, lighter than any other mammal, and must eat almost constantly to keep its tiny body warm; its heart can beat around 1,500 times a minute.

Which bird is there more of than any other, with over 26 billion alive at once?

Chickens are the most numerous birds on Earth: roughly 26 billion are alive at any moment, more than three for every person, and tens of billions more are raised for food each year.

A male peafowl is a peacock, so what is the female called?

Peahen is the word, though most people call both sexes 'peacocks' anyway; only the male grows the big train of feathers.

What is a group of owls called?

The name probably comes from the owl's old reputation for wisdom; a group in flight is also sometimes called a 'wisdom'.

What colour is a horseshoe crab's blood?

Horseshoe crab blood is blue because it carries oxygen with copper-based hemocyanin instead of iron; medicine makers harvest it for the LAL test that detects bacterial toxins in drugs and vaccines.

From how far away can a lion's roar be heard?

A lion's roar can be heard about 8 km (5 miles) away; lions roar mostly at night, warning rivals to keep out and helping the pride find one another.

Each autumn, millions of monarch butterflies fly thousands of miles to spend winter where?

Eastern monarchs spend winter in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico, in Michoacán; no single butterfly makes the round trip, as it takes several generations to get back north in spring.

Which flavour can a cat not taste at all?

Cats cannot taste sweet things: a broken copy of the Tas1r2 sweet-receptor gene, shared by all cats big and small, means candy and sugar do nothing for them.

Which animals are the closest living relatives of humans?

Fossils and DNA both point the same way; chimps share roughly 98 percent of our genes.

Which African dog breed yodels instead of barking?

The basenji, a hunting dog from central Africa, has an unusually shaped larynx that produces a yodel-like 'baroo' instead of a bark, earning it the nickname 'the barkless dog'.

For roughly how long can a goldfish remember a trick it has learned?

Goldfish have a memory of at least three months: in experiments they learned to push a lever for food and remembered it months later, so the 'three-second memory' tale is a myth.

Which kind of armadillo is the only one that can roll into a complete ball?

Only the three-banded armadillos of South America can curl into a complete ball, with the head and tail plates locking shut; other species have too many plates to curl and dig or run instead.

Which North American animal 'plays dead' when it is scared?

The Virginia opossum goes limp, bares its teeth and oozes a foul smell when terrified, an involuntary shock response that can last hours; this is where the phrase 'playing possum' comes from.

A hedgehog's spines are actually stiff, hollow what?

Hedgehog spines are hollow hairs stiffened with keratin; unlike porcupine quills they are not barbed and do not come loose easily, so a hedgehog keeps its coat of 5,000 or more spines for life.