Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free Llama trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
59 free Llama trivia questions with answers. Llamas are the friendliest-looking animals to have carried an empire on their backs, and this quiz covers everything about them: what a baby is called, why they spit, the strange 'orgle' mating call, how they guard sheep from coyotes, and how they survive on so little water. It also covers their wild cousins the guanaco and vicuña, how to tell a llama from an alpaca, and their history from the Moche and the Inca to the 300,000 that hauled silver from Potosí. Easy questions ask which continent llamas come from and what the baby is called; the hard ones want the gestation period, the number of stomach compartments, the North American origin of the camel family and the price a llama fetched at the peak of the 1990s American llama bubble. There is a fun round on llamas in pop culture too: The Emperor's New Groove, Fortnite's loot piñatas, The Sims and Llamas with Hats. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the llama and its relatives, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which continent were llamas domesticated?
South America
Andean cultures have used them for meat and as pack animals since long before Columbus.
Q 02What is a baby llama called?
A cria
The word is Spanish for 'baby' and is used for young alpacas, vicuñas and guanacos too.
Q 03Llamas belong to which family of animals?
Camels
Early European writers compared them to sheep, but the resemblance to camels was soon recognised; the obvious difference is that llamas have no hump.
Q 04Which wild animal is the ancestor of the domestic llama?
The guanaco
DNA shows the alpaca descends from a different wild camelid, though the two lines have interbred a lot.
Q 05Roughly what share of its body weight can a pack llama carry?
25 to 30 percent
That is good for about 8 to 13 kilometres a day; overload one and it simply lies down and refuses to move.
Q 06From which language did Europeans adopt the word 'llama'?
Quechua
It was historically spelled 'lama' or 'glama', which survives in the scientific name Lama glama.
Q 07Where did the ancestors of llamas originally evolve, about 40 million years ago?
The Great Plains of North America
They only reached South America about three million years ago and had died out in North America by the end of the last ice age.
Q 08The formation of which land bridge let camelids spread south from their original homeland?
The Isthmus of Panama
Old World camels went the other way, crossing from North America into Asia over the Bering land bridge.
Q 09How many compartments does a llama's stomach have?
Three
Cows, sheep and goats have four; llamas are not true ruminants, though they still chew the cud.
Q 10What feature of a llama's digestive system lets it survive on very little water?
An extremely long large intestine
The long colon reabsorbs water, vitamins and electrolytes from waste before it leaves the body.
Q 11What is a llama's mating call, made by an aroused male, called?
An orgle
It sounds like gargling with a buzzing edge and continues throughout mating.
Q 12Roughly how long is a llama's gestation?
About 11.5 months
Mothers cannot lick their newborns clean because their tongue barely reaches outside the mouth; they nuzzle and hum instead.
Q 13Why can't a mother llama lick her newborn clean?
Her tongue barely reaches outside her mouth
The attached tongue extends no more than about 13 millimetres, so she nuzzles and hums to the cria instead.
Q 21Why is one guard llama better than several?
Multiple males bond with each other and ignore the flock
A gelded two-year-old male bonds closely with its new charges and needs no training.
Q 22Which llama was certified as a therapy animal in the Pacific Northwest in 2008?
Rojo
Therapy llamas now visit nursing homes and hospitals; the Mayo Clinic says animal therapy can reduce pain and anxiety.
Q 23Scientists have studied llama antibodies as a possible weapon against which illnesses?
Coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-2
Q 14In what position do llamas mate, unusually for a large animal?
Lying down
The 'kush' position is shared with big cats and dogs, and mating lasts an unusually long 20 to 45 minutes.
Q 15At what time of day are most llama births?
Between 8 am and noon
Daytime births help crias avoid dying of hypothermia in the freezing Andean nights.
Q 16Which of these is a common way llamas communicate with each other?
Humming
A loud, shrill rising-and-falling call is the herd's alarm signal.
Q 17What does a llama with its ears laid back usually mean?
It is unhappy or agitated
Ears perked upward signal happiness or curiosity, and a groaning 'mwa' means fear or anger.
Q 18Among llamas themselves, what is the usual reason for spitting?
To discipline lower-ranked animals
Well-raised llamas rarely spit at people; the angrier the llama, the deeper in its stomach it draws the material from.
Q 19Which of these is a typical move in a fight between male llamas?
Neck wrestling
Fights also involve spitting, chest-ramming and kicking, mostly to knock the rival off balance.
Q 20Llamas are used in North America to guard which livestock?
Sheep and goats
A single gelded male bonds with the flock and drives off coyotes and feral dogs; two llamas tend to bond with each other instead.
Their unusually small antibodies, called nanobodies, can bind targets that human antibodies cannot reach.
Q 24Llamas were the only beasts of burden under which Andean civilisation?
The Inca Empire
For Inca nobles the animal was symbolic, and llama figures were buried with the dead.
Q 25The Inca deity Urcuchillay was depicted as what?
A multicoloured llama
Some historians argue the sheer number of llamas in the southern Peruvian highlands helped the Inca state rise.
Q 26Which pre-Inca people depicted llamas realistically on ceramics and buried them with important people?
The Moche
One scholar argues llama dung fertiliser is what made the Andean switch to farming possible.
Q 27In Aymara mythology, the Heavenly Llama drinks from the ocean and produces what?
Rain
At the end of time, the Aymara believe, llamas will return to the springs and ponds they came from.
Q 28Under Spanish rule, some 300,000 llamas carried ore from the mines at which Bolivian city?
Potosí
Horses, mules and donkeys later took over most of the hauling.
Q 29Llamas were first brought to the United States in the late 1800s for what purpose?
Zoo exhibits
Foot-and-mouth import bans kept numbers tiny until interest as livestock took off in the 1970s.
Q 30At the peak of the American llama bubble, animals sold for as much as what?
$220,000
With no real market for fibre or meat, the only value was breeding more llamas, a classic speculative bubble that duly burst.