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60 free Galápagos Islands trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Galápagos Islands sit on the equator about 900 km off Ecuador, and almost nothing about them is ordinary. Penguins live north of the equator, cormorants forgot how to fly, iguanas graze on seaweed and sneeze out the salt, and a finch on two remote islets drinks the blood of boobies. This quiz covers the geography and geology (the hotspot, the Nazca plate, Volcán Wolf, Sierra Negra's caldera, the youngest and largest islands), the wildlife that made the archipelago famous, and the human story from Bishop Berlanga's accidental discovery in 1535 to Lonesome George's death in 2012. You will meet Darwin and the Beagle, the whalers' barrel post office on Floreana, the marooned Irishman who was the islands' first resident, the Essex crewman who set an island on fire, the US airbase built to guard the Panama Canal, and the tortoise called Diego who fathered around 900 offspring. Questions run from easy (which country owns the islands) to expert (who looked after Lonesome George). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the islands and their species, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Charles Darwin, Ecuador and volcanoes quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Galápagos Islands are a province of which country?
Ecuador
Ecuador formally claimed the islands on 12 February 1832, and they remain the country's Galápagos Province.
Q 02Roughly how far west of the South American mainland do the islands lie?
About 900 km (560 mi)
That is 485 nautical miles, far enough that the islands were never reliably reached by pre-Columbian peoples.
Q 03The 1570 Ortelius map labelled the archipelago 'Insulae de los Galopegos', a name meaning what?
Turtle isles
Herman Melville later called them The Encantadas, the enchanted isles, in his 1854 sketches.
Q 04Who accidentally discovered the islands in 1535?
Bishop Tomás de Berlanga
The Bishop of Panama was drifting off course on his way to Peru when the current carried his ship to the islands.
Q 05Charles Darwin visited the islands aboard which ship?
HMS Beagle
The ship reached the islands on 15 September 1835 and left on 20 October, only five weeks in total.
Q 06In which year did Darwin reach the Galápagos?
1835
The Beagle had left England in 1831; 1859 is the year On the Origin of Species was published.
Q 07Which is by far the largest island in the archipelago?
Isabela
It is made of six coalescing volcanoes and its northern tip crosses the equator.
Q 08Volcán Wolf, the highest peak in the islands, is named after Theodor Wolf, who was what?
A German geologist
Wolf Island in the far north of the archipelago honours the same 19th-century scientist.
Q 09How high is Volcán Wolf?
About 1,700 m (5,600 ft)
Its prominence of more than 1,500 m makes it an 'ultra' peak despite its modest height.
Q 10The archipelago sits on which tectonic plate?
Nazca
The plate slides east-southeast over a stationary mantle plume, so the oldest islands lie to the east and have already sunk.
Q 11Which island is the youngest and furthest west in the group?
Fernandina
Its volcano, La Cumbre, is one of the most active in the islands and erupted in June 2018.
Q 12In which year did UNESCO first list the islands as a World Heritage Site?
1978
A biosphere reserve listing followed in 1985, and the islands spent 2007-2010 on the World Heritage in Danger list.
Q 13What is the capital of Galápagos Province?
Puerto Baquerizo Moreno
It sits on San Cristóbal, near where FitzRoy first dropped anchor in 1835, and is smaller than the main town on Santa Cruz.
Q 21During long El Niño food shortages, marine iguanas have shrunk in length by as much as what?
20%
Connective tissue alone cannot account for the change, so scientists think the bones themselves shorten and later regrow.
Q 22Darwin recorded that someone had nicknamed the marine iguanas what?
Imps of darkness
He also called them 'most disgusting, clumsy Lizards', which is unkind for a man who owed them so much.
Q 23The vampire ground finch supplements its diet with the blood of which seabirds?
Boobies
Several finches may feed on one bird at once, and they also eat the hosts' eggs, so the victims are reluctant to leave the nest.
Q 14Which town on Santa Cruz is the most populous in the islands?
Puerto Ayora
Its main street, Avenida Charles Darwin, runs from the dock to the Charles Darwin Research Station.
Q 15Roughly how many people lived in the islands in 2020?
33,000
In 1941 there were only about 810 residents; tourism has driven most of the growth since the 1960s.
Q 16The national park was declared in 1959, the centenary of what?
Publication of On the Origin of Species
The park began operating in 1968 and was Ecuador's first national park.
Q 17Approximately what share of the islands' land area is national park?
97%
The only exceptions are the areas that had already been colonised when the park was created.
Q 18The Galápagos penguin is the only penguin found where?
North of the equator
The cold Humboldt and Cromwell currents let it survive on the equator, and it is the second-smallest penguin after the little penguin.
Q 19Marine iguanas forage in the sea for what food?
Algae
They are the only living lizards that feed in the ocean, and they are far more graceful in the water than on land.
Q 20How do marine iguanas get rid of the excess salt they swallow?
Sneezing it out through nasal glands
The expelled brine often lands on their own heads and dries into a white crust.
Q 24The vampire finch is endemic to which two islands?
Wolf and Darwin
These are the archipelago's remote northernmost islets, where seeds run short in the dry season.
Q 25The seabird name 'booby' comes from a Spanish word meaning what?
Fool or clown
The birds are clumsy on land and were so tame that sailors could simply walk up and grab them, hence the insult.
Q 26The blue-footed booby's foot colour comes from pigments obtained from where?
From the fish they eat
Well-fed birds have brighter feet, which is why males show them off in a slow high-stepping courtship dance.
Q 27The flightless cormorant lives on how many of the islands?
Two
It is the largest living cormorant, with wings about one-third the size a bird of its weight would need to fly.
Q 28The waved albatross breeds almost exclusively on which island?
Española
Its entire breeding range covers about 9 square kilometres, though it forages up to 100 km away to feed its chicks.
Q 29Lonesome George was the last known tortoise from which island?
Pinta
He was first spotted there in 1971 by a Hungarian snail specialist and moved to Santa Cruz for his own safety.
Q 30In which year did Lonesome George die?
2012
He was thought to be about 100 years old, and every attempt to breed him with females from related islands had failed.