Squirrels
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96 free Squirrels trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
15 free squirrels trivia questions with answers. Think you know everything about squirrels? Test your knowledge with our entertaining 96-question trivia quiz covering fascinating facts about these bushy-tailed creatures. From their incredible jumping abilities to their vital role in forest ecosystems, discover how much you really know about squirrels!
30 of 96 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Founding Father wrote a mock epitaph for Mungo, a pet squirrel he gave an English bishop's daughter?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin consoled Georgiana Shipley in 1772 after Mungo escaped his cage and was killed by a dog, offering the rhyme 'Here Skugg lies snug as a bug in a rug' as a joke epitaph.
Q 02Besides balance and signalling, a squirrel's bushy tail serves which purpose?
Cooling off by pumping blood through it
Cooling off by pumping blood through it is one job; the tail also shields against rain and cold, and its fine hairs are prized for tying fishing flies.
Q 03Which squirrel, weighing under 20 grams, is usually named the smallest in the world?
African pygmy
African pygmy squirrels average about 16 grams and run along the underside of a branch as easily as along the top.
Q 04What is the name for a squirrel's nest made from twigs and leaves, typically found in tree branches?
Drey
Drey: the hollow ball of twigs and leaves sits wedged in a high fork, and new ones become obvious each autumn when leaf-fall exposes them.
Q 05The word 'squirrel' traces back to the Ancient Greek skiouros, which literally combines 'tail' with what?
Shade
Shade: skiouros joins skia, 'shadow', and oura, 'tail', usually read as the animal that sits in its own tail's shade; the borrowed word later replaced the Old English name, ācweorna.
Q 06In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which child do Wonka's nut-sorting squirrels toss down the rubbish chute?
Veruca Salt
Veruca Salt demands a trained squirrel of her own and rushes in to snatch one; the squirrels pin her down, judge her a 'bad nut' and send her down the chute, with her parents close behind.
Q 07What is special about a squirrel's gnawing incisors, which lets it chew through hard nuts year after year?
They keep growing for life
They keep growing for life, and constant gnawing wears them to length; behind them sits a wide gap, the diastema, then the grinding cheek teeth.
Q 08What do naturalists call the sprawling burrow colonies that prairie dogs live in?
Towns
Towns: early explorers coined the name for the dense colonies, which split into wards and family coteries; one in Texas was once estimated to hold 400 million animals.
Q 09Olney, Illinois, gives right of way on its streets to a famous colony of squirrels of which colour?
White
White: Olney's albino eastern gray squirrels have right of way on every street and sidewalk, yet the town's counts since 1997 show them slowly dwindling, with roaming cats the main threat.
Q 10A flying squirrel's patagium is which body part?
Its gliding membrane
Its gliding membrane: the furred patagium stretches between the front and hind legs on each side, and the tail acts as a brake just before the squirrel lands on a trunk.
Q 11Eastern chipmunks haul seeds and nuts back to their burrows in which part of the body?
Their cheek pouches
Their cheek pouches: a chipmunk stuffs both stretchy cheeks before each trip because it lacks the fat reserves to sleep through winter and must wake to eat from its stored hoard.
Q 12What is it called when squirrels bury single nuts in many separate spots for later, rather than in one store?
Scatter hoarding
Scatter hoarding: an eastern gray squirrel makes several thousand caches a season and relies on spatial memory, plus smell, to find them again.
Q 13A stocky groundhog may escape a predator by doing what?
Climbing a tree
Q 21In 2005, a pack of black squirrels in Lazo, Russia, reportedly killed and ate what?
A large stray dog
A large stray dog: villagers in Lazo, in Russia's far east, said black squirrels bit a barking stray to death in the park in late 2005; locals blamed a pine cone shortage, though scientists doubted it.
Q 22What is the term for animals like squirrels and pigeons that thrive by living alongside humans?
Synanthropes
Synanthropes are wild species that thrive beside people; in the gradual process called synurbanization, city squirrels lose much of their inborn fear of humans.
Q 23Which US city first released squirrels into a city park, in 1847?
Philadelphia
Climbing a tree: groundhogs look too heavy for it and are built for digging, yet they climb sizeable trees and swim well too.
Q 14Which of these is a collective noun for a group of squirrels?
Scurry
Scurry: the word is rarely needed, since tree squirrels live mostly alone and bunch together mainly to share a warm nest in cold spells.
Q 15Squirrels are native to every inhabited continent but one, where humans introduced them; which is it?
Australia
Australia's introduced eastern gray squirrels later died out, so the only squirrels living wild there today are introduced palm squirrels from India.
Q 16Besides mountain beavers, which long-hibernating rodents are the squirrel family's closest living relatives?
Dormice
Dormice and the mountain beaver join squirrels in the suborder Sciuromorpha; the mountain beaver, despite its name, is no beaver but the last member of its own ancient family.
Q 17Tree squirrels can climb down a trunk headfirst by rotating which joints 180 degrees?
Their ankles
Their ankles turn a full 180 degrees, letting the hind feet point backward and grip the bark from the opposite direction.
Q 18Which tree-dwelling mammal looks like a small flying squirrel but is actually a pouched marsupial?
The sugar glider
The sugar glider evolved the ability to glide separately, a textbook case of convergent evolution: it is a possum, closer kin to kangaroos than to any squirrel.
Q 19The eastern gray squirrel is the official state mammal of which US state?
North Carolina
North Carolina adopted the eastern gray squirrel as its state mammal in 1969; the species name carolinensis marks the Carolinas as the place where it was first recorded.
Q 20Newborn squirrels are described as altricial; what does that mean about how they are born?
Naked, toothless and blind
Naked, toothless and blind at birth, the young depend entirely on their mother, who in most species feeds and guards them alone in the nest.
Philadelphia released three squirrels into one of its public squares in 1847, the first such release on record, and kept them going with food and nest boxes.
Q 24Which film series features Scrat, a sabre-toothed squirrel chasing an acorn?
Ice Age
Ice Age: the wordless Scrat keeps losing his acorn in ever bigger disasters, and his squeaks come from Chris Wedge, who directed the first film in 2002.
Q 25The Olympic marmot lives almost entirely inside one national park in which US state?
Washington
Washington: the Olympic marmot lives only on the Olympic Peninsula, and in 2009 the state named it its official endemic mammal after a two-year campaign by schoolchildren.
Q 26In winter the Eurasian red squirrel grows noticeably longer tufts of fur on which part of its body?
Its ears
Its ears: the tufts thicken with the darker winter coat between August and November, and they are one quick way to tell a red squirrel from a grey, which has none.
Q 27Alvin and Simon are two singing Chipmunks; which brother completes the trio?
Theodore
Theodore: Ross Bagdasarian voiced all three brothers himself, speeding up his own singing on a tape recorder he had bought with almost the last of the family savings.
Q 28Gray squirrels were first brought to Britain in the 1870s for what reason?
As fashionable additions to estates
As fashionable additions to estates: landowners released them as novelties, and on mainland Britain they have since largely displaced the native red squirrel.
Q 29Besides Britain and Ireland, which European country had an established invasive population of eastern gray squirrels as of 2025?
Italy
Italy: grey squirrels released at Stupinigi near Turin in 1948 kept spreading, and the EU has since banned importing, breeding or releasing the species anywhere in the Union.
Q 30Gray squirrels pretending to bury food when they know they are being watched is taken as evidence of what?
Theory of mind
Theory of mind: the fake burials imply a squirrel models what a watcher knows; they also use smell to raid rivals' caches and landmarks to recall their own.