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50 free Animal Kingdom trivia questions with answers. Animal Kingdom trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Animals trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01Which bird has the greatest wingspan of any living species, reaching about 3.7 metres?
Wandering albatross
The wandering albatross has the largest wingspan of any living bird, up to about 3.7 metres; it can glide for hours without a wingbeat by locking its shoulders and riding the wind.
Q 02Which animal's stripes are thought mainly to deter biting flies rather than provide camouflage?
Zebra
Zebra stripes are unique to each animal, and why they exist is still argued over; experiments with striped coats on horses point to confusing biting flies rather than camouflage.
Q 03The Komodo dragon, the world's largest lizard, is native to a handful of islands in which country?
Indonesia
Komodo dragons are native to Indonesia, on Komodo, Rinca, Flores and nearby islands; males reach 3 metres, their bite delivers venom, and most live inside Komodo National Park.
Q 04How many legs does an insect have?
Six
Insects have six legs in three pairs, all attached to the thorax; that separates them from spiders with eight and crabs with ten.
Q 05Which ocean creature has three hearts?
Octopus
An octopus has three hearts: two pump blood through the gills and one drives it round the body; the main heart stops when it swims, one reason it prefers to crawl.
Q 06What is a group of lions called?
Pride
A group of lions is a pride, built around related females and their cubs, with one or a few adult males who must fight to keep their place.
Q 07Which bird is the fastest animal on the planet when diving?
Peregrine falcon
The peregrine falcon's hunting stoop exceeds 320 km/h, and one trained bird was clocked at about 390 km/h, making it the fastest animal on Earth in a dive.
Q 08What is the only mammal capable of true sustained flight?
Bat
Bats are the only mammals with true powered flight; flying squirrels, colugos and sugar gliders merely glide on skin flaps, while a bat's wing is a membrane over elongated finger bones.
Q 09Which animal produces the loudest sound of any living creature?
Sperm Whale
The sperm whale's echolocation clicks reach about 236 decibels underwater, the most intense sound measured from any animal; a blue whale's calls top out around 188.
Q 10What distinguishes amphibians from reptiles in their life cycle?
Metamorphosis from gilled larvae
Amphibians undergo metamorphosis from gilled larvae: a tadpole breathes with gills before growing lungs and legs, while a reptile hatches as a miniature adult and never makes that switch.
Q 11Which egg-laying mammal delivers a painful venom through a spur on the male's hind foot?
Platypus
The male platypus carries a venomous spur on each hind foot; the venom is not lethal to humans but causes pain that can last weeks, and is thought to be used against rival males in the breeding season.
Q 12Which filter-feeding giant, reliably measured at 18.8 metres, is the largest fish alive?
Whale shark
The whale shark is the largest living fish, with one individual reliably measured at 18.8 metres; despite its bulk it strains plankton through its gills and is harmless to the snorkellers who swim with it off Mexico and the Philippines.
Q 13Which flightless bird lays an egg that can weigh a fifth of the mother's body weight?
Kiwi
Q 21How do dolphins sleep without drowning?
One brain hemisphere sleeps at a time
One eye stays open, opposite the resting hemisphere, so the animal keeps surfacing to breathe and watching for sharks.
Q 22Which animal can regenerate its entire body from a tiny fragment?
Planarian flatworm
A planarian flatworm can regrow from a piece as small as 1/279th of the original within weeks, which is why early biologists called them 'immortal under the edge of a knife'.
Q 23What is the fastest land animal over short distances?
Cheetah
The kiwi is chicken-sized but lays an egg of around 20 per cent of its body weight, among the largest relative to body size of any bird; the female barely eats in her last days before laying.
Q 14Which of India's 'Big Four' venomous snakes rubs its scales together to make a sizzling warning?
Saw-scaled viper
The saw-scaled viper gets its name from rubbing its serrated, keeled scales together to produce a sizzling warning; it bites readily and, with the cobra, krait and Russell's viper, is one of India's 'Big Four'.
Q 15Flamingos get their pink colour from carotenoid pigments in which food?
Brine shrimp
Flamingos get their carotenoids from brine shrimp and algae, which they filter from the water with their upside-down bills; zoo birds fed the wrong diet fade to white.
Q 16Which animal has the longest gestation period?
African elephant
The African elephant's gestation lasts around 22 months, the longest of any mammal; the calf arrives weighing about 100 kg and the mother will not give birth again for at least four years.
Q 17What unique defense mechanism does the Texas horned lizard use?
Squirts blood from its eyes
The Texas horned lizard squirts blood from its eyes: it raises the pressure in its head until vessels around the eyelids burst, spraying up to 1.5 metres, and the blood tastes foul to dogs, coyotes and wolves.
Q 18Which ant farms an edible fungus, carrying it loads up to 50 times its own weight?
Leafcutter
Leafcutter ants never eat the leaves they cut; the fungus they farm does, and the colony eats the fungus, a partnership that has run for tens of millions of years.
Q 19Chironex fleckeri, blamed for at least 64 deaths in Australian waters since 1884, is what kind of animal?
Box jellyfish
Chironex fleckeri is a box jellyfish whose tentacles can stop a heart within minutes; northern Australian beaches close in 'stinger season' and keep vinegar on hand to neutralise unfired stinging cells.
Q 20Adélie penguins build their rough nests out of what material?
Stones
Adélie penguins build nests of small stones; good ones are scarce on the bare Antarctic shore, so neighbours steal from each other constantly, and a well-chosen stone is a courtship gift.
The cheetah reaches around 100 km/h in bursts of a few hundred metres, thanks to a flexible spine, long limbs and semi-retractable claws that grip like running spikes.
Q 24Along with the common chimpanzee, which primate is our closest living relative?
Bonobo
The bonobo and the chimpanzee are the two Pan species; they split from each other after their line split from ours, so each shares about 98.7 percent of our DNA and neither is 'closer'.
Q 25Lemurs live wild only on Madagascar, an island lying off the coast of which continent?
Africa
Madagascar lies off the east coast of Africa across the Mozambique Channel; its isolation and wildly seasonal climate let more than a hundred lemur species evolve, from the mouse lemur to the indri.
Q 26Which deep-sea creature has the largest eyes in the animal kingdom?
Colossal Squid
The colossal squid has the largest eyes of any living animal, dinner-plate sized at 27 to 30 cm across, built to catch the faint bioluminescent glow of approaching predators in the dark.
Q 27Able to sprint at about 70 km/h, which is the fastest bird on land?
Ostrich
The ostrich sprints at about 70 km/h, the fastest of any bird on land; it is also the heaviest living bird and lays the largest egg of any living land animal, though relative to body size that egg is small.
Q 28What is the world's smallest mammal by weight?
Etruscan Shrew
The Etruscan shrew weighs about 1.8 grams, as much as a paperclip, making it the lightest mammal; the bumblebee bat takes the title by skull size and body length instead.
Q 29Which bird migrates the longest distance annually?
Arctic Tern
The Arctic tern flies from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back each year, a round trip tracked at 70,000 to 90,000 km and the longest known migration; its reward is two summers and more daylight than any other creature.
Q 30What adaptation allows the wood frog to survive being frozen solid?
Glucose floods its tissues
Urea and glucose act as cryoprotectants that keep ice from forming inside its cells; up to about two thirds of its body water can freeze and the heart stops until spring.