Lions
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95 free Lions trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free lions trivia questions with answers. Did you know that a lion's roar can be heard from 5 miles away? Test your knowledge about these magnificent big cats with our comprehensive 95-question lions quiz. Discover surprising facts about their social behavior, hunting strategies, and role in ecosystems.
30 of 95 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What kills most adult lions in the wild?
Humans and other lions
Humans and other lions account for most adult deaths, so a wild male rarely lives past 12 and a lioness reaches about 16, while zoo lions can live into their twenties.
Q 02What is the primary role of male lions in a pride?
Defending territory
Defending territory is the males' main job: they patrol the edges of the pride's range, roar and fight off rival males, while the lionesses do most of the hunting.
Q 03What did a study of lions in US zoos find gives males longer, thicker manes?
Cold temperatures
Cold temperatures: comparing lions in 17 zoos across the United States, researchers tied up to half of a mane's length and density to climate, since a thick mane holds in heat like a scarf.
Q 04How do lions usually get within range of their prey?
Stalking close under cover
Stalking close under cover makes up for poor stamina: several lions may creep to within about 30 metres from different angles before a short rush, and many kills come near cover or at night.
Q 05From how far away can a lion's roar be heard?
About 5 miles
About 5 miles: a roar carries roughly 8 km, so pride members who have split into subgroups across a large range can keep in contact, and rival lions hear that the land is occupied.
Q 06Where does a lioness usually give birth?
A hidden den
A hidden den, such as a thicket, reed-bed or cave, keeps the newborn cubs out of sight; their mother only brings them back to meet the pride after several weeks.
Q 07When new males take over a lion pride, what do they usually do to the young cubs?
Kill them
Kill them: a lioness does not become fertile again until her cubs mature or die, so killing the young lets the new males father their own sooner, though mothers who band together sometimes fight them off.
Q 08Among living cats, only which species grows larger than the lion?
Tiger
Tiger: a male lion weighs 150-250 kg and is second in size only to the tiger, yet under the skin the two are so alike that only experts can tell their bodies apart.
Q 09Male lions with which mane trait have greater reproductive success and hold their place in a pride longer?
Darker manes
Darker manes: a long-term Serengeti study found dark-maned males were better fed, held their place longer and raised more surviving cubs, but paid for it by running hotter in the hot months.
Q 10In which Indian state can you find the last remaining wild Asiatic lions?
Gujarat
Gujarat: the Gir Forest and the countryside around it are the Asiatic lion's only wild home, and the state has fought for years against sending any of its lions to a second site in Madhya Pradesh.
Q 11Cubs born together in a pride suckle from whom?
Any nursing lioness
Any nursing lioness: after pregnancies of about 110 days, pride lionesses often give birth together and suckle one another's cubs, so the young grow at the same pace with a more equal chance of survival.
Q 12The Serengeti National Park, where scientists have tracked lion prides for decades, is in which country?
Tanzania
Tanzania: the Serengeti's closely monitored lions were struck in 1994 by canine distemper, caught from the domestic dogs of nearby villages, and about a third of them died.
Q 13Lion cubs are born with what markings, which fade as they grow up?
Dark spots
Q 21The Lion of Judah was the hereditary title of which country's Solomonic emperors?
Ethiopia
Ethiopia: the Solomonic dynasty claimed descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba through the tribe of Judah, and Haile Selassie styled himself Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
Q 22Which king, crowned in 1189, was called 'the Lionheart' for his reputation as a warrior?
Richard I
Richard I earned the name Coeur de Lion as a commander, yet he spent very little of his ten-year reign in his own kingdom, passing most of it on crusade, in captivity or at war in France.
Q 23Three lions appear on the coat of arms of which country's football (soccer) team?
England
England: the three lions come from the medieval royal arms, though heralds long called the beasts leopards, a term for their walking, face-on pose rather than the species.
Dark spots: the rosettes fade as a cub grows up, though some never quite vanish and can still be made out on the legs and underparts of adults.
Q 14What may be hidden inside the dark tuft at the tip of some lions' tails?
A small hard spur
A small hard spur lies hidden in the tuft of some lions' tails, and nobody knows what it is for; the tuft itself is missing at birth and only grows in during a cub's first months.
Q 15What is the IUCN Red List conservation status of the African lion?
Vulnerable
Vulnerable is the listing for lions as a whole, but West Africa's lions, put at about 400 by a 2014 study, are rated Critically Endangered.
Q 16As of the mid-2020s, roughly how many lions are estimated to remain in the wild?
About 20,000
About 20,000 wild lions are thought to remain: a species that once roamed most of Africa and parts of Asia and Europe has vanished from more than nine-tenths of its historic range.
Q 17Which famous lion was controversially killed by a trophy hunter in Zimbabwe in 2015?
Cecil
Cecil, a black-maned Hwange National Park lion wearing a research collar, was shot with an arrow by American dentist Walter Palmer in July 2015 and killed hours later; Palmer was never charged.
Q 18How do lions in a pride typically greet one another?
Rubbing heads
Rubbing heads is the pride's greeting: two lions nuzzle foreheads, faces and necks with their tails looped in the air, most often when they meet again after time apart.
Q 19What usually happens to male lions at around two or three years old?
They are driven out
They are driven out of the pride once they are big enough to rival the resident males, then wander, often with brothers or cousins, for years before they can win a pride of their own.
Q 20Which Egyptian goddess has the head of a lioness?
Sekhmet
Sekhmet: in one myth the sun god Ra sent the lioness goddess to punish humanity, then stopped the slaughter by pouring out beer dyed red like blood, which she drank until she was too drunk to go on.
Q 24Which real-life lioness is the heroine of Joy Adamson's memoir 'Born Free'?
Elsa
Elsa was an orphaned cub raised by game warden George Adamson and his wife Joy; her two sisters went to Rotterdam Zoo, while Elsa was taught to hunt and released into the wild.
Q 25Simba, the hero of The Lion King, takes his name from the word for 'lion' in which language?
Swahili
Swahili: simba means lion, and the film's motto hakuna matata, 'no worries', is Swahili too, though the chant that opens 'Circle of Life' is sung in Zulu.
Q 26Whose palace gates were guarded by winged, human-headed lions?
The Assyrians
The Assyrians: pairs of lamassu, winged bulls or lions with human heads, flanked palace gates at Nimrud, Khorsabad and Nineveh; the winged human-headed motif is older, recorded at Ebla around 3000 BC.
Q 27The Tsavo man-eaters were a pair of lions infamous for killing railway workers in which country?
Kenya
Kenya: two maneless males preyed on workers building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in 1898 until engineer John Henry Patterson shot them; he claimed 135 victims, but later research put the toll nearer 35.
Q 28Which type of habitat do African lions primarily occupy?
Grasslands and savannas
Grasslands and savannas: for all the talk of the 'king of the jungle', lions favour open plains, scrub and open woodland, and they are absent from the moist tropical forests around the equator.
Q 29Lionesses in a pride pool their young cubs into a group known as what?
A crèche
A crèche: mothers whose litters arrive close together keep the cubs in one group and spend most of their time beside it, and cubs born in step like this are the likeliest to survive.
Q 30Panthera spelaea, an extinct Ice Age cat that roamed from Europe across Siberia, is commonly called what?
Cave lion
Cave lion: Ice Age artists painted it on cave walls in France, and their pictures suggest that the males, unlike today's lions, had little or no mane.