Tropical Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
This tropical trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers and covers everything between the two tropics: the geography (where the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn sit, the Amazon, Borneo, the Galápagos, the Maldives, Kilimanjaro's snow), the weather (hurricanes versus typhoons, trade winds and the doldrums), the wildlife (sloths, toucans, jaguars, capybaras, orangutans, poison dart frogs, hummingbirds and clownfish), the fruit bowl (pineapples, bananas, mangoes, coconuts, durian, jackfruit and dragon fruit) and the party (piña coladas, mai tais, mojitos, rum, tiki bars, ukuleles, hula and leis). It works as a round for a luau, beach party or summer pub quiz as well as a geography or biology warm-up. The easy questions are ones anyone who has been on holiday can answer; the medium ones ask about rainforest facts and famous islands; the hard ones want the child who worked out how to hand-pollinate vanilla, the town that invented the daiquiri and the year Puerto Rico made the piña colada official. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What sets the tropics' edges about 23.4 degrees from the equator?
Earth's tilt
Earth's tilt, about 23.4 degrees, sets how far from the equator the Sun can ever stand directly overhead; the tilt is slowly shrinking, so each tropic creeps about 15 metres closer to the equator every year.
Q 02Which line of latitude marks the tropics' northern edge?
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer was named in ancient times, when the Sun stood in the constellation Cancer at the June solstice; Earth's slow wobble has since moved that point out of Cancer altogether.
Q 03Dust blown across the Atlantic from which desert fertilises the Amazon rainforest with phosphorus?
The Sahara
The Sahara sends dust from an ancient lake bed in Chad across the ocean each year, and the phosphorus in it replaces what heavy rain washes out of the Amazon's soils.
Q 04The Amazon River holds which world record?
Largest discharge of water
Largest discharge of water: the Amazon pushes fresh water so far into the Atlantic that Spanish explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, sailing into its mouth in 1500, named it the 'Sweet Sea'.
Q 05Which layer of a tropical rainforest is richest in plant and animal life?
The canopy
The canopy forms a leafy roof that soaks up most of the sunlight, so very little reaches the ground and the forest floor stays dim and surprisingly clear of undergrowth.
Q 06The Great Barrier Reef, in the Coral Sea, lies off the coast of which Australian state?
Queensland
Queensland's reef nearly ended James Cook's first voyage: in 1770 the Endeavour ran aground on it, and the damaged ship had to be beached for seven weeks of repairs.
Q 07Coral bleaching happens when corals lose what?
Their symbiotic algae
Their symbiotic algae feed corals and give them colour; heat-stressed corals expel them and turn white, but a bleached coral is not dead and can survive if the stress passes.
Q 08Clownfish live in size-based dominance hierarchies within their sea anemones; which individual ranks at the top?
The breeding female
The breeding female is the largest fish and ranks first; all clownfish are born male, and when she dies the breeding male changes sex to take her place while the rest move up a rank.
Q 09A tropical cyclone in the northwestern Pacific is called what?
A typhoon
A typhoon is the same storm as a hurricane; only the location differs, which is why 1994's Hurricane John became Typhoon John when it crossed the International Date Line.
Q 10Sailors call the windless zone near the equator where the trade winds meet what?
The doldrums
The doldrums could becalm a sailing ship for weeks, because the hot air there rises instead of blowing along the surface; meteorologists call the belt the Intertropical Convergence Zone.
Q 11In the Northern Hemisphere tropics, the trade winds blow mainly from which direction?
The northeast
The northeast trades blow from the northeast because the Coriolis effect deflects air moving toward the equator to the right; south of the equator they arrive from the southeast.
Q 12Which naturalist studied the endemic species of the Galápagos Islands in the 1830s?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin spent five weeks in the Galápagos in 1835; noticing that its mockingbirds differed from island to island helped start his doubts that species were fixed.
Q 13Which nation of coral atolls is the lowest-lying country on Earth?
The Maldives
Q 21Which fruit did Columbus first encounter on Guadeloupe in 1493 and carry back to Spain?
Pineapple
Pineapple became a symbol of wealth in Europe after Columbus brought it home; a Scottish earl even crowned his hothouse with a stone pineapple about 14 metres tall.
Q 22Botanically, what kind of fruit is a banana?
A berry
Botanically a banana is a berry, a fleshy fruit that develops from a single ovary, while strawberries and raspberries are not berries at all; the banana 'tree' is really a giant herb.
Q 23Which banana variety replaced the Gros Michel as the West's standard supermarket banana?
Cavendish
Cavendish took over after Panama disease wiped out Gros Michel plantations in the 1950s; because Cavendish plants are identical clones, a newer strain of the same fungus has since begun attacking them too.
The Maldives is so low that in 2009 its president and ministers put on scuba gear and held a cabinet meeting underwater to draw attention to rising seas.
Q 14Borneo, the world's third-largest island, is shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and which country?
Brunei
Brunei, a small sultanate on the north-west coast, holds only a sliver of Borneo, yet the island's name began as early European travellers' version of 'Brunei'.
Q 15Angel Falls, the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall at 979 metres, is in which country?
Venezuela
Angel Falls in Venezuela is named not for angels but for US pilot Jimmie Angel, who landed on the mesa above it in 1937, bogged his plane in the mud and needed 11 days to walk out.
Q 16Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, sits just south of the equator in which country?
Tanzania
Kilimanjaro, in northern Tanzania, wears an ice cap just three degrees from the equator, but more than three-quarters of that ice has melted away since 1912.
Q 17Which Southeast Asian city lies just one degree of latitude, about 137 km, north of the equator?
Singapore
Singapore sits so close to the equator that its temperature barely changes through the year, staying high and almost uniform in every month.
Q 18Bali is unusual within Indonesia for being the only province with a majority of which religion?
Hinduism
Hinduism sets Bali's calendar: on Nyepi, the Hindu New Year, the whole island observes a day of silence, with streets and beaches empty and even the airport closed.
Q 19Tahiti, in the Society Islands, is the largest island of which overseas collectivity of France?
French Polynesia
French Polynesia's main island hosted the surfing events of the 2024 Paris Olympics: organisers chose Tahiti's Teahupo'o reef for its giant waves, about 15,000 km from the host city.
Q 20Sixteenth-century sailors named which tropical fruit after the goblin face they saw in it?
Coconut
Coconut comes from 'coco', a goblin used to scare children in Iberian folklore: sailors saw its eyes and mouth in the three dents at the base of the shell.
Q 24Which fruit is the national fruit of both India and Pakistan?
Mango
Mango fever once gripped China too: in 1968 Mao passed on a gift of mangoes from Pakistan's foreign minister to workers, who preserved them and paraded wax copies like holy relics.
Q 25The durian is banned from some hotels and public transport in Southeast Asia because of what?
Its lingering smell
Its lingering smell can hang around for days, yet naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, once he dared to try one, likened the flesh to a rich custard flavoured with almonds.
Q 26Which fruit, native to India, is the largest borne on any tree?
Jackfruit
Jackfruit can reach about 45 kg, and instead of dangling from twigs it sprouts straight out of the trunk and thickest branches of its tree.
Q 27Dragon fruit grows on what kind of plant?
A cactus
A cactus: dragon fruit grows on climbing cacti from Mexico and Central America, known as night-blooming cereus because each big flower opens after dark for a single night.
Q 28Green papaya contains papain, an enzyme used in kitchens for what?
Tenderising meat
Papain, the protease in green papaya, is used for tenderising meat because it breaks down tough muscle proteins; it is the active ingredient in many commercial meat tenderisers.
Q 29In 1841 an enslaved boy on Réunion discovered how to hand-pollinate which crop?
Vanilla
Vanilla could be farmed around the world once 12-year-old Edmond Albius showed how to fertilise each orchid flower by hand with a thin stick and a flick of the thumb; freed in 1848, he died in poverty.
Q 30In pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, cocoa beans were commonly used as what?
Currency
Cocoa beans served as currency: the Aztecs collected tribute in them and Spanish chroniclers recorded goods priced in beans; the cacao tree was domesticated over 5,000 years ago in South America.