Hammerhead Shark Trivia
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38 free Hammerhead Shark trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This hammerhead shark trivia quiz covers the strangest head in the sea: what the cephalofoil is for (360-degree vision, depth perception and a wider spread of electroreceptors), which of the ten species has the biggest hammer, how a great hammerhead pins a stingray with its head and swallows the barbs, why great hammerheads swim on their sides, and how the little bonnethead eats seagrass and reproduces without a male. It also covers the sharks and people: 17 unprovoked bites and zero deaths, the fin trade that puts 375,000 great hammerheads a year through Hong Kong, the 2013 CITES listing, the scalloped hammerhead as the first shark under the US Endangered Species Act, the beizam totem of the Torres Strait and the aumakua guardian sharks of Hawaii. Every question was verified against a primary reference (mainly the Wikipedia articles on the hammerhead family and its species) and carries a citation. Play it with our great white, whale shark and ocean quizzes.
30 of 38 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Besides keeping water flowing over its gills, why must a hammerhead keep swimming?
It sinks if it stops
It sinks if it stops: a hammerhead is heavier than water, so it stays up only by the lift its fins generate as it moves.
Q 02What is the technical name for the hammerhead's flattened, T-shaped head?
Cephalofoil
Cephalofoil: it was long assumed to work as a steering wing, but tests on young hammerheads found they do not roll into their turns as a winged craft would.
Q 03Which hammerhead has the widest head for its size, as much as half its body length across?
The winghead
The winghead is named for it: the narrow, wing-like blades of its head stretch as wide as half its body length, far beyond any other hammerhead's.
Q 04What is the bonnethead's main prey, cracked open with flat teeth at the back of its jaws?
Blue crabs
Blue crabs: the bonnethead sweeps its head over the seabed to find them, seizes them with small sharp front teeth and crushes the shells with broad molars.
Q 05A 2009 study found that a hammerhead's wide-set eyes give it better what than sharks with ordinary heads?
Binocular vision
Binocular vision: the wider the hammer, the more the two eyes' fields overlap in front, and the widest-headed species tested had nearly four times the overlap of a lemon shark.
Q 06The sensory pores spread across a hammerhead's wide head detect what from prey hidden under the sand?
Electric fields
Electric fields: the pores, called ampullae of Lorenzini, pick up the faint electricity every living animal gives off, and a wider head sweeps more seabed at once.
Q 07Which are the hammerheads' closest relatives?
The requiem sharks
The requiem sharks, the family of the bull and lemon sharks: hammerheads are thought to descend from a requiem-shark ancestor, which is why researchers use lemon sharks as their plain-headed comparison.
Q 08When do great hammerheads do most of their hunting?
At dusk
At dusk: in the fading light they swing their heads in wide arcs just above the bottom as they search for a meal.
Q 09How does the front of a great hammerhead's head differ from a scalloped hammerhead's?
Nearly straight, not arched
Nearly straight, not arched: the great hammerhead's hammer is almost square-fronted, while the scalloped species has a curved front edge with the scallop-like lobes that give it its name.
Q 10What is the great hammerhead's favourite prey?
Stingrays
Stingrays are the great hammerhead's favourite prey; it sweeps its head over the sand to sense rays buried there, and venomous barbs lodged in its mouth do not seem to trouble it.
Q 11How does a great hammerhead subdue its favourite prey?
Pins it with its head
Pins it with its head: the shark presses its catch down with the hammer and takes a disabling bite from each side before it can escape.
Q 12Where do young scalloped hammerheads spend their first years, out of reach of bigger sharks?
Shallow coastal bays
Shallow coastal bays: the nurseries shelter pups from predators, but they also put the young within easy reach of inshore fishing nets.
Q 13A 2016 study found great hammerheads spend up to 90% of their time doing what to save energy?
Swimming on their side
Q 21Which shark was shown in 2022 to be an omnivore, digesting floating seaweed along with its usual prey?
The whale shark
The whale shark: tissue chemistry showed it takes real nourishment from the sargassum it swallows while filter-feeding, making the biggest fish also the biggest omnivore.
Q 22What unusual social behaviour do some hammerheads show by day?
Swimming in large schools
Swimming in large schools: scalloped hammerheads gather over reefs and seamounts by day, mostly females, then split up after dark to hunt alone in open water.
Q 23In 2014 NOAA listed four scalloped hammerhead populations for protection under which law?
The US Endangered Species Act
Swimming on their side: a 2016 study of tagged great hammerheads found 'rolled swimming' up to 90% of the time, using the tall dorsal fin as a lift surface and cutting drag by about 10%.
Q 14Unlike most sharks, where have great hammerheads been observed mating?
Near the surface
Near the surface: most sharks mate on or close to the sea floor, which makes the great hammerhead's habit of rising to the top of the water to couple an oddity.
Q 15Which hammerhead prefers cool temperate seas to the tropics favoured by its relatives?
The smooth hammerhead
The smooth hammerhead ranges as far as the British Isles and New Zealand, and because swimmers are scarcer in such cool water, it rarely crosses paths with people.
Q 16How do hammerhead embryos get nourishment in the later stages of gestation?
Through a yolk-sac placenta
Through a yolk-sac placenta: once the embryos use up their yolk, the empty sac attaches to the wall of the womb and works like a mammal's placenta until birth.
Q 17What happens to most great hammerheads that fishing crews hook by accident?
They die on the line
They die on the line: great hammerheads tire quickly and are unusually fragile once hooked, so even catch-and-release fishing poses a real threat to them.
Q 18In 2007, a zoo's bonnethead gave science its first proof that sharks can do what?
Reproduce asexually
Reproduce asexually: the pup was born in 2001 to a female that had not been near a male hammerhead for three years, and DNA tests published in 2007 found no trace of a father.
Q 19Which food can make up more than half of what is in a bonnethead's stomach?
Seagrass
Seagrass can exceed 60 per cent of a bonnethead's gut contents, and feeding tests showed the sharks digest about half of it, the first proof of an omnivorous shark.
Q 20The bonnethead is the only shark known to differ between males and females in what?
The shape of its head
The shape of its head: males grow a bulge along the front edge as they mature, at the same time as their claspers lengthen, while females keep an evenly rounded outline.
The US Endangered Species Act: after a 2011 petition from two conservation groups, NOAA listed two populations as endangered and two as threatened in July 2014.
Q 24How did the IUCN classify the great hammerhead in its 2019 assessment?
Critically Endangered (CR)
Critically Endangered (CR): the assessment found steep declines worldwide, driven above all by demand for the species' large fins.
Q 25What does the International Shark Attack File record about hammerheads and people?
A few bites and no deaths
A few bites and no deaths: for all their fearsome looks, hammerheads have fewer than twenty unprovoked attacks to their name in over four centuries of records, none of them fatal.
Q 26Which city is the world's largest shark fin trade market?
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is the hub of a trade in which hammerhead fins rank among the most highly rated of all for shark fin soup, prized by traders for their large size.
Q 27How does a hammerhead's pale belly help it hunt?
It hides the shark from below
It hides the shark from below: seen against the bright surface, a white underside melts into the light, a camouflage called countershading that lets it close in on prey unseen.
Q 28Hammerheads were added to Appendix II of which convention in March 2013?
CITES
CITES: the vote put hammerheads on Appendix II alongside the oceanic whitetip and the porbeagle, so their fins and meat can cross borders only under permit.
Q 29What do bonnetheads follow on their long daily and seasonal travels?
Warm water
Warm water: bonnetheads prefer seas above 21°C, so as winter sets in they move toward the equator, travelling long distances every day to stay in the warmth.
Q 30In Hawaiian tradition, families who honoured the hammerhead as their 'aumakua saw the shark as what?
A guardian ancestor
A guardian ancestor: such families would never hunt or eat sharks, believing that departed relatives had taken the animal's form.