Getting your questions ready
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60 free Weird Science trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Weird science trivia is the good stuff: a planet whose day outlasts its year, a shrimp whose claw makes a flash hotter than the Sun's surface, a frog that spends winter frozen with no heartbeat, and a cloud near the centre of the galaxy that is full of alcohol. These 60 questions collect the facts that make people say 'that can't be right' and then look it up. The set mixes astronomy, animal biology, the human body, physics, chemistry, weather and plants and fungi, so nobody's specialism carries them through. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups (how many hearts an octopus has) to genuinely tough (which receptor birds lack that lets them eat chillies unbothered). Every question has four options and a short explanation that adds one more strange detail. Every answer here was checked against a cited source before publishing, and the source is shown with each question, so it works for a science classroom, a pub quiz round or settling an argument at dinner.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which planet does a single rotation take longer than a full trip around the Sun?
Venus
A Venusian sidereal day lasts 243 Earth days, while its year is only about 225.
Q 02Which planet is the only one in the Solar System less dense than water?
Saturn
It is about 30 percent less dense than water despite being 95 times Earth's mass.
Q 03Because of its 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, one sunrise-to-sunrise day on the innermost planet lasts how long?
Two of its years
That works out to roughly 176 Earth days from one sunrise to the next.
Q 04A matchbox full of neutron-star material would weigh roughly how much?
3 billion tonnes
That is about the mass of a half-cubic-kilometre chunk of the Earth's crust.
Q 05The molecular cloud Sagittarius B2 near the Milky Way's centre contains large amounts of what?
Alcohol
It holds ethanol, methanol and vinyl alcohol, plus ethyl formate, the ester that gives raspberries their flavour.
Q 06Solar eclipses look perfect because the Sun is about 400 times wider than the Moon and also 400 times what?
Farther away
The coincidence will not last: the Moon is slowly drifting away from Earth.
Q 07Viewed from space, what colour is the Sun?
White
Atmospheric scattering is what makes it look yellow, orange or red from the ground.
Q 08What colour are sunsets on Mars, thanks to fine dust scattering the light?
Blue
Mie scattering by red dust does the opposite of Earth's Rayleigh scattering, leaving blue hues around the setting Sun.
Q 09On Uranus and Neptune, methane is thought to be squeezed into what, which falls through the interior?
Diamonds
This 'diamond rain' may help drive the convection behind Neptune's magnetic field.
Q 10Roughly how many solar neutrinos pass through each square centimetre of your body every second?
65 billion
Almost all of them pass straight through the entire Earth without touching anything.
Q 11How many hearts does an octopus have?
Three
One systemic heart pumps blood round the body and two branchial hearts push it through the gills.
Q 12Which microscopic animals survived ten days exposed to the vacuum of space in 2007?
Tardigrades
In their dehydrated 'tun' state they also tolerate temperatures from −272 °C to 149 °C.
Q 13Which jellyfish is called 'immortal' because it can revert from an adult back to a juvenile polyp?
Turritopsis dohrnii
In theory the cycle can repeat indefinitely, though individuals still get eaten or fall ill.
Q 21The flash from a pistol shrimp's collapsing bubble implies a temperature above roughly what?
4,700 °C
That is not far off the surface temperature of the Sun, though it lasts only a fraction of a second.
Q 22The bombardier beetle defends itself by spraying a chemical mix that reaches roughly what temperature?
Near the boiling point of water
Hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones react explosively inside the beetle and pop out of a rear valve.
Q 23Which animal's heart rate can drop to just two beats per minute during a deep dive?
Blue whale
The heart of one stranded blue whale weighed 180 kilograms, the largest of any animal.
Q 14Which Australian marsupial's cube-shaped droppings won a 2019 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics?
Wombat
The cubes are thought to stop the droppings rolling off the rocks and logs where they mark territory.
Q 15The platypus hunts with its eyes, ears and nostrils closed. What sense does it rely on instead?
Electrolocation
It is also one of the very few venomous mammals, thanks to a spur on the male's hind foot.
Q 16By slowing its heart rate, a sloth can hold its breath underwater for up to how long?
40 minutes
That is longer than a bottlenose dolphin manages.
Q 17In a zero-oxygen atmosphere, how long can a naked mole-rat survive apparently unharmed?
18 minutes
It also lacks pain sensitivity in its skin and is remarkably resistant to cancer.
Q 18Which North American amphibian winters frozen solid, with no heartbeat, breathing or brain activity?
Wood frog
Up to 70 percent of its body water turns to ice, and it thaws out in spring and hops away.
Q 19The oldest known individual of which species was estimated at 392 years old, give or take 120?
Greenland shark
The species is thought to live at least 272 years, making it the longest-lived vertebrate.
Q 20The peacock mantis shrimp's strike creates what in the water, hitting prey a second time?
Cavitation bubbles
Its club accelerates at over 10,000 g and hits with a force of about 1,500 newtons.
Q 24What colour is horseshoe crab blood, harvested to test for bacterial contamination?
Bright blue
Copper-based hemocyanin does the job that iron-based hemoglobin does in us.
Q 25Where are a butterfly's taste receptors located?
On its feet
Females use them to check whether a leaf will feed their caterpillars before laying eggs on it.
Q 26Which mammals may live more than 200 years, making them the longest-lived of all?
Bowhead whales
They also have the longest baleen plates of any whale, up to five metres.
Q 27When startled, some sea cucumbers defend themselves by doing what?
Expelling their internal organs
The process is called evisceration, and the organs grow back.
Q 28Why do zebras have stripes, according to the theory with the most supporting evidence?
To deter biting flies
In experiments, horses dressed in zebra-print coats attracted far fewer landing flies.
Q 29Which fungus takes control of a carpenter ant's behaviour and then grows a fruiting body out of its head?
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis
Alfred Russel Wallace discovered the 'zombie-ant fungus' in 1859.
Q 30Modern estimates put the microbial cells in and on a human body at roughly how many compared with human cells?
About the same
The old '10 to 1' figure was revised down in 2016.