Endangered Species Trivia
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97 free Endangered Species trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Some of the most famous animals on Earth are hanging on by a thread, and a few have already slipped away. This endangered species trivia quiz covers how we measure the danger, from the IUCN Red List categories and CITES to the US Endangered Species Act of 1973 and Endangered Species Day, and then tours the species themselves: giant pandas, tigers, snow leopards, Amur leopards, mountain and Cross River gorillas, orangutans, Javan and Sumatran rhinos, the northern white rhino's last two females, vaquitas, blue whales, kakapo, whooping cranes, California condors, pangolins, axolotls, gharials, Devils Hole pupfish and the Wollemi pine. It also remembers the ones we lost, such as the passenger pigeon and Lonesome George, and celebrates the comebacks: bald eagles and peregrines after DDT, the Arabian oryx, Przewalski's horse, the black-footed ferret found alive on a Wyoming ranch, sea otters, humpbacks and the Iberian lynx. The 97 questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against the IUCN and documented sources, so it is safe to use in a classroom, a nature club or a pub quiz.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which organization maintains the Red List of Threatened Species?
IUCN
IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, was so short of funds in 1961 that WWF was set up largely to raise money for its work.
Q 02Which Red List category, abbreviated LC, is used for species that are widespread and abundant?
Least Concern
Least Concern can only be awarded after a formal assessment, so a species too little studied to judge is filed as Data Deficient instead, however common it may be.
Q 03Which US president signed the Endangered Species Act into law in 1973?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon had declared existing protections inadequate in 1972; signing the tougher law, he called threatened wildlife an irreplaceable part of the national heritage.
Q 04Which 1973 treaty regulates international trade in endangered animals and plants?
CITES
CITES was signed in Washington in 1973 and now has more than 180 member countries; in 1989 it gave African elephants its strictest protection, shutting down the legal international ivory trade.
Q 05Which animal appears on the logo of the World Wide Fund for Nature?
Giant panda
The giant panda logo was inspired by Chi Chi, the star attraction at London Zoo when the fund was launched in 1961; naturalist Sir Peter Scott drew the first version.
Q 06In 2016 the WWF's mascot species was moved from Endangered to which Red List category?
Vulnerable
Vulnerable replaced Endangered after China's fourth national survey counted 1,864 of the animals in the wild, a rise taken as proof that decades of habitat protection were working.
Q 07Which pesticide thinned eggshells and drove bald eagles toward extinction in the mid-20th century?
DDT
DDT built up in the fish and birds that raptors ate until their eggshells grew so thin they cracked before hatching; the US cancelled most uses in 1972.
Q 08In which US state were bald eagles never listed as endangered, even as they nearly vanished elsewhere?
Alaska
Alaska's eagles stayed off the list although the territory had paid bounties on more than 100,000 of them between 1917 and 1953; in the lower 48 the bird stayed listed until 2007.
Q 09Which bird became extinct in the wild in 1987, when the last free-flying individuals were captured for a breeding program?
California condor
The California condor now flies again in California, Arizona, Utah and Baja California, but lead fragments in the carcasses it scavenges remain its leading cause of death.
Q 10Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died in 1914 at which zoo?
Cincinnati Zoo
Cincinnati Zoo's Martha was the last of a species once counted in billions; the telegraph and railroads let commercial hunters track the flocks and ship birds to city markets by the barrel.
Q 11The vaquita, a small porpoise on the brink of extinction, lives only in which body of water?
Gulf of California
The Gulf of California's northern end is the vaquita's entire range; fewer than 20 survive, because they drown in gillnets set illegally for other catch.
Q 12Illegal fishing for which large fish, prized for its swim bladder, is the main cause of vaquita deaths?
Totoaba
Totoaba swim bladders are smuggled to China, where they fetch high prices for soup; the fish is about the size of a vaquita, so nets set for it are the deadliest.
Q 13One rhino species survives only as a single wild population in Ujung Kulon National Park, on which Indonesian island?
Java
Q 21Lonesome George, who died in 2012, was the last of which kind of animal?
Pinta Island tortoise
The Pinta Island tortoise was thought extinct until a snail researcher spotted George in 1971; despite decades in a breeding centre with related females, he left no offspring.
Q 22Which antelope, hunted to extinction in the wild by the early 1970s, was later restored from zoo-bred herds?
Arabian oryx
The Arabian oryx was saved by a rescue mission: in 1962 a few of the last wild animals were caught and sent to an American zoo, and herds bred from them were released in Oman from 1982.
Q 23Przewalski's horse has been reintroduced to Hustai National Park in which country?
Mongolia
Java's western tip shelters the last few dozen Javan rhinos; the species once ranged across Southeast Asia, but its only other surviving population, on the mainland, died out around 2010.
Q 14After the last male northern white rhino died in 2018, the two surviving females lived under armed guard in which country?
Kenya
Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy took in Najin and her daughter Fatu from a Czech zoo in 2009, in the hope that a return to African grassland would encourage them to breed.
Q 15Which is the smallest and hairiest of the five living rhino species?
Sumatran
The Sumatran rhino is also Asia's only two-horned rhino; since Malaysia's last ones died in 2019, it survives only in Indonesia.
Q 16The Amur leopard, one of the rarest big cats, is native to which region?
Southeastern Russia and northern China
Southeastern Russia and northern China held fewer than 30 of these leopards in 2007; since Russia created a national park for them in 2012, the count has passed 100.
Q 17Mountain gorillas survive in two populations: the Virunga Mountains and which Ugandan national park?
Bwindi Impenetrable
Bwindi Impenetrable National Park holds about half of all mountain gorillas; after decades of close protection the subspecies passed 1,000 animals and left the Critically Endangered list in 2018.
Q 18Which great ape survives as only 250 to 300 animals in the hills along the Cameroon-Nigeria border?
Cross River gorilla
The Cross River gorilla has been seen throwing sticks and clumps of grass when threatened by people, a rare act of defiance in gorillas, which usually flee from humans.
Q 19Which New Zealand bird is the world's only flightless parrot and also the heaviest parrot of all?
Kakapo
The kakapo was nearly wiped out by the cats, rats and stoats that settlers introduced, so every known bird now lives on a predator-free island or sanctuary, each one named and tagged.
Q 20Which prairie predator, believed extinct by 1979, was rediscovered near Meeteetse, Wyoming, in 1981?
Black-footed ferret
The black-footed ferret relies on prairie dogs for about 90 percent of its diet, so it crashed when prairie dog towns were destroyed; the Wyoming survivors were caught by 1987 to found a breeding program.
Mongolia saw its last wild takhi in the 1960s; every Przewalski's horse alive descends from fewer than 15 wild-caught animals bred in zoos, and zoo-bred herds began returning in the 1990s.
Q 24What has devastated Tasmanian devil numbers since the late 1990s?
A contagious facial tumour disease
A contagious facial tumour disease spreads when devils bite one another, one of the very few cancers that can pass between animals; it now threatens the species' survival.
Q 25The saola, nicknamed the "Asian unicorn", was unknown to science until 1992, when its horns were found in which country?
Vietnam
Vietnam's Vu Quang reserve gave up the first clue, a pair of strange long horns in a hunter's house; the few saolas ever caught died within months, so no zoo holds one.
Q 26Which wolf, declared extinct in the wild in 1980, was released in North Carolina in 1987?
Red wolf
The red wolf's last wild animals, on the Texas-Louisiana coast, were deliberately captured in the 1970s to start a breeding program; their descendants in North Carolina are the only ones now living wild.
Q 27The Florida panther is the only confirmed population of which wild cat in the eastern United States?
Cougar
Cougar numbers in Florida had sunk to 20 or 30 by 1995, when eight females were brought from Texas and released to counter inbreeding.
Q 28Which falcon, gone from the eastern United States by the 1960s, left the endangered list in 1999?
Peregrine
Peregrine falcons were restored by releasing thousands of captive-bred young; they have since taken to city life, nesting on the ledges of tall buildings and hunting pigeons.
Q 29Which marine mammal, hunted almost to extinction for its fur before a 1911 treaty, keeps kelp forests healthy by eating sea urchins?
Sea otter
The sea otter has the densest fur of any animal, which is what made its pelt so prized; without otters, sea urchins multiply and graze kelp forests bare.
Q 30Which fish-eating crocodilian of South Asian rivers has a long, thin snout ending in a pot-shaped bump on adult males?
Gharial
The gharial is thought to be named after that bump, the ghara, which resembles an earthen pot of the same name; males use it to produce a loud buzzing sound.