Veterinary Trivia
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127 free Veterinary trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
74 free Veterinary trivia questions with answers. Veterinary medicine is where biology meets bedside manner, and this quiz covers the whole waiting room. You will get the history of the profession, from the first vet school in eighteenth-century France to the woman who broke into the Royal College in 1922, plus the pop-culture vets everyone knows: James Herriot, Doctor Dolittle and Dr. Pol. The middle of the set is the stuff vet techs and students actually memorise: how many teeth a dog has, which compartment of a cow's stomach is which, why horses cannot vomit, and normal body temperatures. The hard end asks about parvovirus genetics, the MDR1 mutation, the Coggins test and the number of questions on the NAVLE. Pet owners, pub-quiz teams and anyone in scrubs should find a comfortable and an uncomfortable stretch. Every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, including the Merck Veterinary Manual and Wikipedia's articles on the people, diseases and animals involved, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 127 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The world's first veterinary school was founded by royal order in 1761 in which city?
Lyon
Lyon got the school by order of Louis XV's council, and within months its first students were being sent out to fight the cattle plague then devastating French herds.
Q 02Which French horseman founded the world's first veterinary school?
Claude Bourgelat
Claude Bourgelat first studied law, then ran a riding academy and learned animal anatomy from two surgeons before opening his school to fight cattle plague.
Q 03The word 'veterinary' comes from the Latin 'veterinae', meaning what?
Working animals
Working animals, or beasts of burden, were 'veterinae' in Latin, so a Roman 'veterinarius' was a doctor of draft animals, in effect a cattle doctor.
Q 04Edward Jenner's famous 1796 vaccine was made from which animal disease?
Cowpox
Cowpox seemed to shield milkmaids from smallpox, so Jenner took matter from a milkmaid's cowpox sore and put it into his gardener's young son, who then proved immune.
Q 05Which monarch granted the royal charter that created Britain's Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons?
Victoria
Victoria had been queen for nearly seven years when the 1844 charter set up the college, after vets Thomas Mayer and Thomas Walton Mayer campaigned for one to protect the profession.
Q 06In 1922, who became the first woman recognised as a veterinary surgeon by the Royal College?
Aleen Cust
Aleen Cust trained in Edinburgh but was refused the exams as a woman, so she practised in Ireland for years without the diploma before a 1919 equality law opened the register to her.
Q 07Which Midwestern university runs America's oldest surviving veterinary college, founded in 1879?
Iowa State
Iowa State opened the first public veterinary college in the United States; the private schools that came before it had all closed by the 1920s, leaving it the oldest still running.
Q 08The first D.V.M. degree granted in the United States was awarded in 1876 by which university?
Cornell
Cornell's first D.V.M. went to Daniel Salmon, the man Salmonella is named after, although it was his assistant Theobald Smith who actually found the bacterium.
Q 09The oldest surviving veterinary text, a treatise on cattle ailments, comes from which civilization?
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt's Kahun veterinary papyrus is nearly 4,000 years old; Flinders Petrie dug its fragments out of a Middle Kingdom town in 1889, and they are now in London.
Q 10What was the cattle illness caused by Brucella abortus long called, after its Danish discoverer?
Bang's disease
Bang's disease honours the vet Bernhard Bang, who found the bacterium in 1897; it makes cows miscarry and gives people undulant fever, which they can catch from unpasteurised milk.
Q 11Which 9-year-old boy, bitten by a rabid dog, was famously treated with Pasteur's rabies vaccine in 1885?
Joseph Meister
Joseph Meister had been badly bitten and was expected to die; he survived the course of injections and as an adult worked as a caretaker at the Pasteur Institute.
Q 12Which cattle plague became in 2011 only the second disease ever declared eradicated worldwide?
Rinderpest
Rinderpest joined smallpox on the list; fear of it had led to the founding of the World Organisation for Animal Health in 1924, the body that confirmed its end in 2011.
Q 13The word 'rabies' comes from a Latin word meaning what?
Madness
Madness or rage is what the Latin 'rabies' meant, from 'rabere', to rave; the disease's older name, hydrophobia, comes from the victims' dread of water.
Q 21Which actor plays James Herriot in the 2020 revival of All Creatures Great and Small?
Nicholas Ralph
Nicholas Ralph was making his television debut, so he went through a 'vet bootcamp' first to learn the procedures he would have to perform on camera.
Q 22The 2020 All Creatures Great and Small premiered on which UK broadcaster?
Channel 5
In the US it airs on PBS Masterpiece, and neither this version nor the BBC one was filmed in the real town because it had grown too big.
Q 23Reality TV vet Dr. Jan Pol was born in which country?
Netherlands
Netherlands-born Jan Pol first came to America as a high-school exchange student in the 1960s, which is how he met Diane, his future wife and co-star.
Q 14What was the real name of the Yorkshire vet who wrote as James Herriot?
Alf Wight
Alf Wight practised in Yorkshire for almost 50 years, and the books he began publishing in his fifties went on to sell some 60 million copies.
Q 15The real James Herriot ran his practice in which North Yorkshire market town?
Thirsk
Thirsk still draws fans of the books: his old surgery at 23 Kirkgate is now the World of James Herriot museum, visited by thousands of people every year.
Q 16In the Herriot books, the fictional town where the practice is based is called what?
Darrowby
Darrowby, he wrote, was a composite of the market towns he knew plus 'a fair chunk of my own imagination'; the 2020 series films it in the Dales village of Grassington.
Q 17The Herriot pen name came from a Scottish footballer playing for Birmingham City in which position?
Goalkeeper
Goalkeeper Jim Herriot was playing for Birmingham City against Manchester United when the vet, barred from advertising under his own name, saw him in goal and borrowed the name.
Q 18The real James Herriot qualified in 1939 from a veterinary college in which city?
Glasgow
Glasgow Veterinary College took him six years to get through; he had set his heart on the job as a boy after reading a Meccano Magazine article about vets.
Q 19In James Herriot's books, the eccentric senior partner Siegfried Farnon was based on which real vet?
Donald Sinclair
Donald Sinclair told the author the first book was a test of their friendship, yet he was the one who gave visiting fans guided tours of the surgery.
Q 20Who played James Herriot in the original BBC series of All Creatures Great and Small?
Christopher Timothy
Christopher Timothy was told to keep his speech neutral for the part, even though the author he was playing spoke with a soft Scottish lilt.
Q 24The Incredible Dr. Pol is filmed at a rural practice in which US state?
Michigan
Michigan's shortage of rural vets keeps the clinic busy: he opened Pol Veterinary Services in Weidman in 1981 after ten years working for another practice.
Q 25Which author created Doctor Dolittle, the country doctor who learns to talk to animals?
Hugh Lofting
Hugh Lofting invented the doctor in illustrated letters to his children from the trenches of the First World War, because the real news was too horrible or too dull.
Q 26The TV series Bondi Vet follows veterinary surgeon Chris Brown in which city?
Sydney
Sydney's Bondi gave the show its name, but when CBS aired it in America the title was changed to 'Dr. Chris: Pet Vet'.
Q 27Which game-show host signed off for decades by urging viewers to have their pets spayed or neutered?
Bob Barker
Bob Barker closed The Price Is Right with the plea from the early 1980s and gave millions to neutering programmes; Drew Carey kept the line when he took over in 2007.
Q 28Which popular bouquet flower can cause fatal kidney failure in cats that merely lick its pollen?
Lilies
Lilies are toxic to cats in every part, from petals and pollen to the water in the vase, and can destroy the kidneys in under three days; dogs get only a stomach upset.
Q 29Which is the largest compartment of a cow's four-part stomach?
Rumen
The rumen works as a giant fermentation vat where microbes break down grass the cow could never digest alone, turning it into the fatty acids that are her main fuel.
Q 30Farmers get cows to swallow what object to prevent 'hardware disease'?
A magnet
A magnet settles in the cow's stomach and holds on to stray nails and baling wire, so the sharp metal cannot pierce the stomach wall.