From scapula’s to sea lions and skeletons to snakes, the field of biology is crammed full of wonderful (and undoubtedly) weird facts and trivia. So, what better subject to explore then in an epic quiz night? We’ve put together 100 of the best biology quiz questions and answers to help you do just that!
Whether you’re hosting a virtual quiz night over Skype, Zoom or Google Meets; pulling together a real-life pub quiz, or just wanting to challenge yourself with some cracking quiz questions, we hope you enjoy this foray into fun questions about biology.
General Biology Questions and Answers
Let’s cell-ebrate (sorry – we couldn’t resist a pun) the start of this ultimate biology quiz with an easy, general round. Here’s your first ten questions and answers on biology:
1. By what process to plants turn sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into food (and oxygen)?
2. What was the name of Charles Darwin’s ship?
3. What is the largest living structure on Earth?
4. Bone marrow is the primary site of the production of what type of cell?
5. How many stomachs does a cow typically have?
6. Which grow faster – toenails or fingernails?
7. What is the one country to which lemurs are native?
8. What type of cow has the biggest ears?
9. What is the largest single bone in the human body?
10. What starts: “I swear by Apollo the physician, by Aesculapius, Hygeia and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment the following Oath…”
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General Biology Quiz Answers
- Photosynthesis
- HMS Beagle
- The Great Barrier Reef
- Red blood cells
- One, but the stomach has four parts, each for a different stage of the digestive process.
- Fingernails
- Madagascar
- An elephant. The female elephant is called a cow; a male is called a bull.
- The femur
- The Hippocratic Oath
Just how big? The Great Barrier Reef is huge. With almost 3,000 individual reefs and 900 islands, it stretches for 2,600km. To put it in perspective, it’s about the same size as Germany!
True or False Biology Quiz Questions and Answers
There are a lot of myths out there in the field of biology, and it’s sometimes a little tricky to separate fact from fiction. But, let’s see how your contestants fare in doing just that – here are ten biology trivia questions stating interesting biology facts. They just need to know whether they are true or false…
1. Polar Bears are left-handed.
2. Elephants are the only mammal that can’t jump.
3. The animal with the longest penis relative to its body length is the barnacle.
4. A sea lion is the first non-human mammal with a proven ability to keep a beat.
5. Butterflies taste with their feet.
6. Cats and dogs are colour blind.
7. Bats are blind.
8. A rhinoceros’ horn is made of hair.
9. Camels store water in their humps.
10. Only males are called peacocks. Females are called peahens.
Love science? Then you should definitely check out our ultimate science trivia quiz!
True or False Biology Quiz Answers
- False. This is a widespread misnomer, probably started by observations that they are very good with their left paws. They are in fact ambidextrous.
- False. For instance, sloths, hippos and rhinos also cannot.
- True
- True
- True
- False. While this was long believed to be the case, both can see shades of blue and green.
- False. While bats can hunt in the dark using echolocation, they can also see and indeed sometimes prefer using eyesight to sound when hunting.
- True
- False, they store fats there.
- True
(Mostly) Flying Things Biology Quiz Questions and Answers
From the days of the dinosaurs (hello, pterodactyl!), animals haven’t just roamed the land, but the skies too. From buzzing insects, ballooning spiders, screeching bats and over 10,000 species of birds, you have many a winged animal taking flight. But, how much do you – and your contestants – know about these airborne beasts? Find out with these ten biology quiz questions dedicated to (mostly) flying things.
1. What is the only mammal that can fly?
2. How many fingers do birds have on their wings?
3. What bird lays the largest eggs?
4. In relation to its own size, what bird lays the smallest egg?
5. Chinstrap, Macaroni and Emperor are all types of which bird?
6. What birds were used to deliver military information (and Olympic games results) in Ancient Greece?
7. What is the only bird with nostrils at the end of its long beak?
8. In Pulitzer Prize winning book, Harper Lee used what bird to symbolise innocence?
9. How many wings does a butterfly have?
10. What bird is both the smallest and spend most time flying?
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(Mostly) Flying Things Biology Quiz Answers
- The bat
- Three. The first supports a small part of the wing called the alula while the other two support the main flight feathers.
- The ostrich
- The ostrich
- Penguin
- Pigeons
- The kiwi
- The mockingbird
- Four
- The hummingbird
Did you know! The kiwi uses the nostrils at the end of its long nose to search for land-based food (it famously cannot fly). But rather interestingly, it snorts loudly to clear its nostril, potentially frightening away prey.
Animal Noises – Our Funny Biology Quiz Questions
There are said to be over 6,500 languages actively spoken in the world today. But beyond the interesting accents and language cues of Afrikaans or Arabic, did you know that the ‘sounds’ made by animals are different, depending on the country you live in?
Yup, according to the Spanish, a turkey goes ‘clou clou’, while Belgians protest they make a ‘Irka Kloek Kloek’ sound.
So, in this slightly obscure round, let’s see how you and your participants do by guessing the animal by the sound that other countries’ citizens think it makes….!
1. What animal do the Japanese claim goes ‘Mau Mau’?
2. In Sweden, what animal says ‘Vou Vou’?
3. What animal goes ‘squitt’ in Italian?
4. Which animal, according to the Danes, says ‘Rap-Rap’?
5. In France, what animal says ‘Hihan’?
6. The Japanese claim what animal goes ‘Nyihaha Nyihaha’?
7. How would the Korean Coo-Koo-Ri-Koo be translated into English?
8. In Albania, which animal goes ‘Hunk’?
9. According the French, which animal ‘Hou Hou’?
10. In Turkey, what goes ‘Tiss’?
Want more animal questions? Try our ultimate animal trivia quiz!
Animal Noises – Our Funny Biology Quiz Answers
- A cow
- A dog
- A mouse
- A duck
- A donkey
- A sheep
- Cock-A-Doodle-Doo
- A pig
- An owl
- A snake
Underwater Biology Quiz Questions and Answers
In the darkest depths of the ocean, you’ll find some of the most fascinating fauna and flora on the planet. So, in this round, we dive straight into the sea, dedicating ten questions to marine biology and all the creatures that inhabit the underwater world.
1. What is special about a seahorse giving birth and caring for their young?
2. Types of what mammal include, the narwhal, the sperm, and the beluga?
3. How many legs does the average lobster have?
4. Why might an octopus be considered royalty?
5. Notably, what happens when the queen of a school of clownfish dies?
6. Pilchards are the young of what fish?
7. It is possible to determine the age of a fish based on rings located where on its body?
8. Which fish, common in Japanese cuisine, has the potential to be lethally poisonous if not properly prepared?
9. Dolphins travel in family groups called what?
10. What colour is a live lobster?
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Underwater Biology Quiz Answers
- It is done by the male
- Whale
- Ten
- It has blueblood. (It also has three hearts.)
- A male changes sex to become queen.
- Sardines
- Its ears
- The blowfish (or pufferfish)
- Pods
- Blue or black
Fun fact: Oysters can to and fro between genders depending on what I best for mating.
The Human Body Quiz Questions
From the top of your head to the tips of your toes, the human body is an incredible marvel of machinery. Our noses can detect over 1 trillion smells. Our belly buttons grow special types of hair just to catch lint. And we’re the only animals with chins (ain’t that a fun trivia fact?).
In this quiz round, let’s explore all these incredible part of human anatomy, with ten quiz questions about the human body.
1. Where in a person is a hammer, anvil and stirrup found?
2. What name is given to the group of glands that create hormones in the human body?
3. Which part of the body is unable to repair itself?
4. What region of the brain is named from the Greek for ‘seahorse’?
5. True or false? A giraffe and a human have the same number of vertebrae in their necks.
6. True or false? Men with large feet are more likely to have a large penis.
7. From where does lacrimation occur?
8. A synonym of ‘anger’ or ‘bitterness’, what fluid is used to break down lipids in the small intestine?
9. Which organ would be better developed in humans if they ate a lot of grass?
10. What does a human do roughly 4.2 million times a year?
Enjoyed the human body questions? Add more rounds with this Medical Trivia Quiz!
The Human Body Quiz Answers
- The ear
- Endocrine glands
- Teeth
- The hippocampus
- True
- False, a 2002 study of 104 men showed no correlation.
- The eyes/ tear ducts.
- Bile
- The appendix
- Blink
Ailments & Diseases Quiz Questions and Answers
With the previous round looking at the body in its finest health, we thought it would be an interesting (albeit more macabre) idea to deliver ten quiz questions about the different diseases and ailments that afflict it. Let’s see how many you can guess in this round:
1. The name of what disease stems from the medieval Italian for “bad air”?
2. What is a sub-microscopic, infectious, parasitic particle of genetic material contained in a protein coat and which replicates only inside the living cell of a host organism?
3. What is the scientific term for a condition that creates dizziness?
4. One of the most robustly found outcomes in science, what is a substance or treatment with no intended therapeutic value?
5. What fictional disease akin to leprosy is first introduced in Stannis Baratheon’s daughter Shireen, in the Games of Thrones world?
6. In 2018, one quarter of the world’s population is thought to have latent infection of which infectious disease?
7. What disease is also commonly known as ‘lockjaw’?
8. Since the development of an oral vaccine in the late 1980’s, the prevalence of what disease has reduced worldwide by 99%?
9. Also known as German measles, what disease is particularly problematic for pregnant women?
10. A vaccine for what disease reduced US cases from 4 million a year, and being contracted by 90% of all children by age 9, in 1995 by 80% by 2010?
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Ailments & Diseases Quiz Answers
- Malaria
- A virus
- Vertigo
- A placebo
- Greyscale
- Tuberculosis. In 2018, there were more than 10 million cases of active TB which resulted in 1.5 million deaths.
- Tetanus
- Polio
- Rubella
- Chickenpox
What’s in a placebo? Although the evidence is not concrete, it seems that even when patients have been told that the treatment they receive is a placebo, it still has a positive effect. Similarly, the more a doctor talks about the potential (unwanted) side effects of a treatment, the more likely they are to occur.
Under the Microscope – Biology Quiz Questions and Answers
It’s time to break out a bit more of the science behind biology, with a few questions relating to the finer points of biology, the kind of stuff you’d find under the microscope, for example. Here are ten science quiz questions all relating to biology:
1. With whom did Francis Crick and James Watson makes great strides in the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA?
2. What hormone is produced by the pancreas?
3. What word is given to breaking down of proteins or nucleic acids?
4. What does DNA stand for?
5. How long does it take for a blood cell to circulate through your body: one, two or three minutes?
6. What part of a cell comes from the Latin word for the seed inside a fruit?
7. Along with G (for guanine), what are the three other letters which start the words for the four main nucleobases found in DNA?
8. In 1917, which vitamin was the first to be discovered and named?
9. What name is given to the type of reproduction involving a single parent that results in offspring that are genetically identical to that parent?
10. What is the rarest blood type in humans?
Under the Microscope – Biology Quiz Answers
- Rosalind Franklin
- Insulin
- Denature
- Deoxyribonucleic acid
- One minute
- Nucleus
- A (adenine), C (cytosine) and T (thymine)
- Vitamin A
- Asexual reproduction
- AB negative, at less than one percent of the population.
Collective Names for Animals Quiz
Okay, it might be a stretch but we just had to toss in a bit of ‘right brain’ creativity, in what has deservedly been a ‘left brain’ quiz, all dedicated to more analytical, scientific fodder. In this round we’ll give you the animal in question, and ask you to answer with the ‘collective noun’ for it.
1. What is the collective noun for fish?
2. Appropriately, what is the collective noun for giraffes?
3. What is the collective noun for bees?
4. What is the collective noun for camels?
5. Appropriately, what is the collective noun for flamingos?
6. What is the collective noun for geese?
7. What is the collective noun for elephants?
8. What is the collective noun for wolves?
9. Appropriately, what is the collective noun for porcupines?
10. With hope rather than expectation, what is the collective noun for owls?
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Collective Names for Animals Answers
- A school
- A tower
- A swarm
- A caravan
- A flamboyance (or a stand)
- A gaggle
- A parade
- A pack
- A prickle
- A parliament
General Plant Quiz Questions and Answers
And just like that, it’s the end of our brilliant biology quiz! So, because we’ve focussed so much of it on mammals (both the animals and human kind), we thought we’d change gears and end the quiz with a nature-inspired bang. For this final round, let’s close with ten quiz questions all about plants and the floral kingdoms:
1. What type of plant tissue transports water from roots to upper parts of the plant?
2. Around what flower was the world’s first recorded speculative bubble formed?
3. Essential for photosynthesis, what pigment’s name is derived from the Greek for ‘pale green’ and ‘leaf’?
4. What links the Venus Flytrap and the Tropical Pitcher Plant?
5. What is the oldest and largest type of tree?
6. What is the fastest growing plant?
7. What term is given to a cluster of bananas?
8. What was the first plant to be genetically engineered?
9. Why is dracaena trifasciata often known as ‘mother-in-law’s tongue’?
10. Why is the ‘Ketchup ‘n’ Fries’ plant so named?
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General Plant Quiz Answers
- The xylem
- The tulip. At its peak, in February 1637, some single tulip bulbs sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craft worker.
- Chlorophyll
- They are carnivorous
- Redwoods
- Bamboo
- A hand, with the individual bananas known as fingers.
- Tobacco, in 1983
- Because its poison hinders your ability to speak
- Also known as a pomato plant, it can produce both tomatoes and potatoes
How strong? One particular type of bamboo can grow 35 inches in a single day. It also has a greater tensile strength than steel. 💪
What did you think of our biology quiz questions and answers? Let us know if we missed any pearlers off this list, or give us some feedback in the comments below!
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