40 Animals Trivia Questions for Kids
The easiest animals questions in the game, picked for younger players. Every one comes with the answer and a short explanation of why it is right.
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Easy Animals Questions and Answers
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What is a baby whale called?
A calf
Whales are mammals, so they take cattle terms: a calf, born to a cow, in a herd or pod.
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What is a group of penguins on land called?
a colony
Penguins breed in colonies, some of them hundreds of thousands of birds strong. A group swimming together at sea is called a raft instead.
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What is a baby swan called?
A cygnet
Cygnet comes from cygnus, the Latin for swan. Cygnets are grey-brown for their first year before the white adult plumage grows in.
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What is the name for a squirrel's nest, the ball of twigs and leaves wedged in the fork of a tree?
A drey
A drey is woven from twigs and lined with moss, leaves and shredded bark. Squirrels keep more than one: loose open platforms for summer, and a thicker insulated drey for winter and for raising young.
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What is a baby deer called?
A fawn
Fawns are born with white spots that break up their outline in dappled woodland light, and fade as they grow.
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What is a baby goose called?
A gosling
Goslings can walk and feed themselves within a day of hatching, which is why they follow a parent almost immediately.
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What is a baby goat called?
A kid
The human sense of 'kid' came later, borrowed from the animal as slang in the 16th century.
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Beavers build two quite different structures. The dam holds back the stream, but what is the domed stick-and-mud house they actually live in called?
A lodge
A lodge is a mound of branches plastered with mud, standing in the pond the dam has created. Its entrances are underwater, out of reach of wolves and bears, while the living chamber inside sits above the waterline on a floor of shredded wood.
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What is a pig's enclosure called?
A sty
A pig lives in a sty, a word that has been in English since Anglo-Saxon times. A traditional sty pairs a small covered hut with an open yard, because a pig given the choice will not foul the part it sleeps in.
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What is a group of bees called when it leaves its hive and flies together?
a swarm
A group of bees that leaves its hive and flies together is called a swarm. Swarming usually happens when a colony splits and the queen travels with part of the colony to establish a new home.
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What is the name for the network of linked burrows that a group of rabbits lives in?
A warren
A warren is a shared tunnel system with many entrances, dug out by generations of rabbits and holding several breeding females. A doe about to give birth often digs a short blind side tunnel called a stop, plugs the mouth with soil, and rears her kittens in there.
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Which continent is the aardvark native to?
Africa
Aardvarks are native to sub-Saharan Africa.
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What is the name for the nest of an eagle or other large bird of prey, built high on a cliff ledge or at the top of a tall tree?
An eyrie
An eyrie, also spelled aerie, is a raptor's high nest. A pair returns to the same one every year and adds to it each season, and the largest bald eagle nest ever recorded measured about 2.9 metres across. The word is now used for any dwelling perched somewhere high.
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How many legs does a typical spider have?
Eight
Spiders are arachnids, a group characterized by four pairs of walking legs. Their mouthparts and body divisions also differ from those of insects.
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In which ocean are beluga whales native?
Arctic Ocean
Beluga whales live in the Arctic Ocean and its nearby northern seas.
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Which continent is the giant panda native to?
Asia
Giant pandas naturally occur in central China, in Asia.
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Which continent is the Komodo dragon native to?
Asia
Komodo dragons are native to several Indonesian islands in Asia.
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Which continent is the snow leopard native to?
Asia
Snow leopards inhabit mountain ranges across central and southern Asia.
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A male bowerbird spends weeks building a decorated avenue of sticks on the forest floor. What is it for?
Attracting a female to mate
The bower is a stage, not a home. The male builds it, sweeps the floor and lays out collected objects sorted by colour, satin bowerbirds hoarding anything blue, then dances there. After mating the female goes off and builds a separate cup nest in a tree, where she raises the young alone.
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Which continent is the kangaroo native to?
Australia
Kangaroos are native to Australia.
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Which continent is the platypus native to?
Australia
Platypuses are native to eastern Australia and Tasmania.
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In the wild, the quokka is found only in the far southwest of which country?
Australia
Quokkas live only in the southwestern corner of Australia. The largest population is on Rottnest Island near Perth, where there are no foxes or cats and the animals are famously unbothered by people.
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What is a young horse called?
Foal
Foal is the general term for a young horse, regardless of sex. A male foal may later be called a colt and a female a filly.
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What is a baby kangaroo called?
Joey
A joey is born very undeveloped and crawls into its mother's pouch. It continues growing there while nursing and becoming strong enough to emerge.
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Which animal digs and lives in a sett?
Badger
A sett is a badger's tunnel system, often with dozens of entrances, sleeping chambers lined with dry grass and bracken, and latrine pits dug outside. One clan after another enlarges the same sett, so a big one can stay in use for over a century.
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What ability distinguishes bats from all other living mammals?
Powered flight
Bats are the only mammals capable of true powered flight. Several other mammals glide, but they cannot generate lift with flapping wings in the same way.
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Which animal is famous for building dams from branches and mud?
Beaver
Beavers fell small trees with their teeth and weave the branches together with mud and stones. The dam floods the stream behind it into a deep pond, which lets the beaver keep the entrance to its lodge safely underwater.
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What does an apiarist keep?
Bees
An apiarist is a beekeeper, from the Latin apis, meaning bee. The place where the hives stand is an apiary.
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An ornithologist spends their career studying what?
Birds
Ornithology is the branch of zoology that deals with birds, covering everything from anatomy and song to migration and population counts. The name comes from the Greek ornis, ornithos, meaning bird.
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Which body covering is unique to birds among living animals?
Feathers
Feathers are made mainly of keratin and evolved from structures related to reptile scales. Birds use them for flight, insulation, camouflage, and display.
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Vampire bats live entirely on blood. What does their saliva do to make that possible?
Stops the blood from clotting
The three living vampire bat species are the only mammals known to feed entirely on blood. Their saliva contains anticoagulant compounds that keep a small wound bleeding while they drink.
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What substance is mainly stored in a camel's hump?
Fat
A camel’s hump mainly stores fat, which can be broken down for energy when food is scarce. The hump may shrink or droop as the stored fat is used.
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Biologically, what is a reef-building coral?
An animal
Corals are colonies of tiny animals called polyps. Many reef-building corals also rely on microscopic algae living inside their tissues for energy.
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In which country do eastern North American monarch butterflies overwinter?
Mexico
Each autumn, eastern North American monarchs travel to the mountain forests of central Mexico.
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Which animal commonly hunts flying insects by using echolocation?
Bat
Nightjars, swallows, and dragonflies are real predators of flying insects, but bats use echolocation to locate them.
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Blood pumped through the vessels in an elephant's ears returns to the body having done what?
Shed several degrees of heat
An elephant's ear is a thin sheet of skin carrying a dense web of blood vessels close to the surface. Blood pushed through them loses heat to the air, and flapping speeds that up, so it returns to the body several degrees cooler. That matters for an animal whose bulk generates far more heat than its surface can easily shed.
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In emperor penguins, which parent incubates the egg through the Antarctic winter, balanced on the feet under a fold of skin?
The male
The female lays a single egg, passes it to the male and walks back to the sea to feed. He balances it on his feet under a fold of skin called a brood pouch and fasts for about two months through the Antarctic winter, huddling with thousands of other males, until it hatches.
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Which is the tallest species of penguin?
Emperor penguin
An emperor penguin stands about 1.1 metres tall and can weigh 40 kg, the largest and tallest penguin alive. It is also the only one that breeds through the Antarctic winter.
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Which of these is the study of insects?
Entomology
Entomology is the study of insects, from the Greek entomon, an insect, literally something cut into, a reference to the segmented body. Etymology traces the history of words, etiology looks at the causes of disease, and ethnology compares human cultures.
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Which bird of prey reaches the highest speed of any animal when it dives on prey?
Peregrine falcon
A peregrine falcon climbs above its target, folds its wings and drops in a dive called a stoop, passing 200 mph. Nothing else alive moves that fast, and the bird has baffles in its nostrils to keep the airflow from stopping it breathing.
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