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50 free Hippo trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free hippo trivia questions with answers. Forty-two questions about the hippopotamus, the river horse that is one of Africa's most dangerous animals and, oddly, a close cousin of whales. The set covers the biology first: how much a bull weighs, why hippos sink rather than swim, how long they can stay under, the red 'blood sweat' that works as sunscreen, their 50 cm canine tusks, and how a calf is born and nursed underwater. It also takes in the pygmy hippo of West Africa and the extinct dwarf hippos of Madagascar. Then it turns to hippos and people: the ancient Egyptian goddess Taweret, the biblical Behemoth, Obaysch, the London Zoo star of 1850, Huberta's trek across South Africa, Pablo Escobar's escaped herd in Colombia, and the internet's favourite hippos, Fiona in Cincinnati and Moo Deng in Thailand. Pop culture rounds it off with Hungry Hungry Hippos, Fantasia's ballerina, Gloria from Madagascar and a 1953 Christmas novelty song. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and shows the sentence that proves it beneath the explanation, so the numbers and names can be trusted for a quiz night or a classroom.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'hippopotamus' comes from Ancient Greek words meaning what?
River horse
Híppos is horse and potamós is river; the usual English plural is hippopotamuses.
Q 02Which group of animals are the closest living relatives of hippos?
Whales and dolphins
Blood proteins, DNA and fossils all point the same way; the two lineages split about 55 million years ago and share the suborder Whippomorpha.
Q 03Roughly how much does an average adult bull hippo weigh?
1.5 tonnes
Cows average about 1.3 tonnes; males seem to keep growing all their lives while females stop at around 25.
Q 04Among land mammals, where does the hippo rank by size?
Third
Only elephants and some rhinos are bigger; the hippo is classed as a megaherbivore.
Q 05Modern zoo hippo tanks with underwater viewing use glass up to how thick?
9 cm
One Ohio zoo spent $73 million from 2015 on an exhibit holding three adults in a 250,000-litre tank behind such glass.
Q 06Despite living in water, how do hippos actually get around underwater?
They sink and walk along the bottom
Dense bones and a low centre of gravity let them sink; whether they can swim at all is genuinely debated.
Q 07How often must an adult hippo surface to breathe?
About every six minutes
Young hippos need air every two or three minutes; adults can even sleep submerged, bobbing up without waking.
Q 08Hippo skin oozes a red substance nicknamed 'blood sweat'. What does it actually do?
Sunscreen and antibiotic
It is neither blood nor sweat: pigments called hipposudoric and norhipposudoric acid absorb UV light and stop bacteria growing.
Q 09Up to how long can a hippo's lower canine tusks grow?
50 cm
The lower canines are honed against the smaller upper ones and are used for fighting rather than feeding.
Q 10What makes up almost all of a wild hippo's diet?
Grass
They leave the water at dusk and walk 3-5 km a night, eating around 40 kg; they eat surprisingly little aquatic plant matter.
Q 11About how much grass does a hippo eat in a night?
40 kg
That is modest for a 1.5-tonne animal, because it spends the day resting in water and burns little energy.
Q 12What top speed are hippos reported to reach on land?
30 km/h
It has never been formally confirmed, but they can hit an airborne stage with all four feet off the ground.
Q 13A hippo's wide-open 'yawn' is really what?
A threat display
Bulls fight with their tusks; the gape shows them off before things get serious.
Q 14Where do male hippos hold territories?
Q 21Roughly how many pygmy hippos did the IUCN estimate remain in the wild in 2015?
Fewer than 2,500
An adult stands only 75-100 cm at the shoulder and weighs 180-275 kg, less than a quarter of its big cousin.
Q 22Moo Deng, the pygmy hippo who went viral in September 2024, lives in a zoo in which country?
Thailand
Her name means 'bouncy pork'; it won a public poll of over 20,000 votes, and daily visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo doubled.
Q 23Fiona, the premature hippo calf born in January 2017, became the star of which US zoo?
Cincinnati Zoo
She was the first Nile hippo imaged by prenatal ultrasound and the zoo's first hippo birth in 53 years; a children's hospital helped raise her.
In the water only
A bull's stretch of river or lake can hold five to thirty cows and calves, but everyone grazes alone and unbothered on land.
Q 15How long is a hippo's gestation period?
Eight months
Cows mature at five or six; they mate in the water and can nurse their calves underwater or on land.
Q 16Roughly how much does a newborn hippo calf weigh?
50 kg
Calves are about 127 cm long at birth and may be kept in nurseries guarded by adults.
Q 17What is a hippo's typical lifespan?
40 to 50 years
Zoo hippos can go much further: Bertha in Manila and Lu in Florida both reached 65.
Q 18How does the IUCN Red List classify the common hippo?
Vulnerable
The population is put at 115,000 to 130,000 and is threatened by habitat loss and poaching for meat and ivory tusks.
Q 19Which large reptile do hippos regularly bully or kill because it shares their rivers?
Nile crocodile
Hippos will avoid crocodiles longer than about 3.5 metres, but displace or kill smaller ones.
Q 20Which small relative from the forests of Liberia is the only other living species in the hippo family?
Pygmy hippopotamus
Found mainly in Liberia's forests, it is nocturnal, solitary and was unknown outside West Africa until the 1800s.
Q 24A wild hippo population in Colombia descends from animals kept by which man?
Pablo Escobar
Four hippos arrived at Hacienda Nápoles in 1981; after his death in 1993 they wandered off and had multiplied to about 200 by 2026.
Q 25How many hippos did Escobar originally import to his private zoo in 1981?
Four
Three females and one male; by 2007 there were 16 roaming the Magdalena River, and one named Pepe was shot in 2009.
Q 26Which Egyptian goddess of childbirth was depicted as an upright female hippopotamus?
Taweret
She has lion limbs and a crocodile's back and tail, and was known as 'Lady of the Birth House'.
Q 27In Egyptian myth, which god takes the form of a red hippopotamus to fight Horus?
Set
He loses; the Ptolemaic historian Manetho also claimed the pharaoh Menes was carried off and killed by a hippo.
Q 28Which beast from the Book of Job is widely thought to be based on the hippopotamus?
Behemoth
Job 40:15-24 describes it eating grass like an ox and lying under the lotus among the reeds.
Q 29Obaysch, who arrived at London Zoo in 1850, drew 10,000 visitors a day and inspired what?
The 'Hippopotamus Polka'
He was the first zoo hippo of modern times, and the first hippo seen in Europe since the Roman era.
Q 30Huberta became a Depression-era celebrity by trekking a great distance across which country?
South Africa
Her wanderings from Zululand were followed in the newspapers for years, and she is now stuffed in a museum in King William's Town.