Animal Science
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50 free Animal Science trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Animal science is the study of the animals people farm and ride: how cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, horses and poultry are built, bred, fed and kept healthy. It is a first-year course at agricultural colleges and a staple of livestock judging contests, and it is full of facts that surprise anyone who has never set foot on a farm. This quiz covers the ground an introductory class does. Expect questions on the vocabulary of the barnyard, the workings of a grazing animal's stomach and a horse's hoof, well-known breeds and where they came from, reproduction and genetics, nutrition and feed, common diseases, and the science of meat, milk, eggs and wool. A few questions meet the people and laws that shaped the field. It is written for students revising for an animal science 101 exam, for quiz bowl and judging teams, and for anyone curious about where food and fibre come from. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the questions work as a study aid as well as a game.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which object do farmers feed to cattle so that swallowed nails and wire cannot pierce the stomach wall?
A magnet
A magnet about the size of a finger settles in the reticulum for life and holds stray metal in place. Vets call the injury it prevents hardware disease.
Q 02Which everyday phrase for a social ranking comes from a Norwegian zoologist's studies of chickens?
Pecking order
Pecking order was first described by Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, who had watched hens since he was a boy and noted which birds could peck others without retaliation.
Q 03Which feature of a hen usually predicts whether her eggs will have white or brown shells?
Earlobes
Earlobes are the usual guide: breeds with white lobes generally lay white eggs and red-lobed breeds lay brown. Shell colour is cosmetic, with no effect on quality or taste.
Q 04Which amphibian shares its name with the V-shaped, rubbery pad on the underside of a horse's hoof?
Frog
The frog acts as a shock absorber and also works like a pump, pushing blood back up the leg toward the heart each time the hoof bears weight.
Q 05Which greenhouse gas do cattle release mainly by belching, as microbes in the rumen break down grass?
Methane
Methane is made in the rumen by microbes called methanogens and leaves through the mouth, at roughly 100 kg per cow each year.
Q 06In which country was Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, created and born?
Scotland
The Roslin Institute in Scotland, near Edinburgh, grew Dolly from a mammary gland cell, which is why she was named after the singer Dolly Parton.
Q 07Which silky fibre comes from the fleece of the Angora goat, not from the rabbit that shares its name?
Mohair
Mohair comes only from the Angora goat, which is shorn twice a year, in spring and autumn. The fluffy yarn sold as angora is rabbit fur.
Q 08Which autistic Colorado State University professor designed curved corrals to calm cattle on the way to slaughter?
Temple Grandin
Temple Grandin was one of the first scientists to report that cattle balk at shadows, dangling chains and other small details that most people never notice.
Q 09Which usually sterile farm animal, bred from a male donkey and a female horse, has 63 chromosomes?
Mule
A mule inherits 32 chromosomes from the horse and 31 from the donkey, and that odd total usually leaves it infertile. Swap the parents and the foal is a hinny.
Q 10Which three-beat horse gait is traditionally said to be named after an English cathedral city?
Canter
Canter is traditionally traced to Canterbury, from the easy speed of medieval pilgrims riding to the shrine there. A gallop is the same gait run faster, in four beats.
Q 11Which organ, found in both cattle and humans, is entirely missing from the body of a horse?
Gallbladder
The gallbladder, which stores bile in cattle and humans, is absent in horses, yet they still tolerate a surprisingly high amount of fat in the diet.
Q 12Which term for a castrated male sheep survives in the word for a flock leader that wears a bell?
Wether
Wether gave English the word bellwether: shepherds hung a bell on the lead wether so they could follow the flock by ear, even when it was out of sight.
Q 13Which term for a young cow that has not yet calved also names a charity that gives livestock to poor families?
Heifer
Heifer International began after Indiana farmer Dan West, ladling out milk to refugee children in the Spanish Civil War, decided they needed a cow of their own.
Q 21What term do meat graders use for the flecks of fat within lean beef that largely decide its USDA quality grade?
Marbling
Marbling is intramuscular fat, and graders weigh it alongside the animal's maturity. Fat laid down near the muscle fibres adds flavour, juiciness and tenderness.
Q 22Which tough cut from a beef animal's lower chest is the classic choice for corned beef and pastrami?
Brisket
Brisket is one of the nine primal cuts of beef, and Montreal's Jewish community turns it into the city's famous smoked meat, a close relative of pastrami.
Q 23Which black-and-white breed, built on Dutch stock, is the choice of most dairy farmers worldwide?
Holstein
Holstein has one of the biggest gene pools of any dairy breed, which has let breeders improve it faster than its rivals. In Britain the commoner name is Friesian, counted there as a separate but very similar breed.
Q 14Which term for a young female pig that has not yet had a litter is spelled like a thin coating of gold?
Gilt
Gilt is the stockman's word for a female pig until she has produced a litter, or two by some local usage, after which she is called a sow.
Q 15Which thick first milk, rich in antibodies, must a newborn calf drink within hours of birth to fight off infection?
Colostrum
Colostrum matters more to calves than to babies: human infants receive antibodies through the placenta before birth, while newborn ruminants get theirs only from this first milk.
Q 16What do cattle, sheep and giraffes all bring back up from the stomach to chew for a second time?
Cud
Cud returns to the mouth because ruminants cannot make the enzymes that break down cellulose, so long chewing and saliva help the stomach's microbes do the job instead.
Q 17Which of a cow's four stomach compartments is called the true stomach because it works much like a human's?
Abomasum
The abomasum is the fourth and final compartment, lined with glands that release acid and digestive enzymes. It also secretes rennet, the extract cheesemakers use to curdle milk.
Q 18Which muscular organ lets a toothless chicken grind its grain, helped by the grit it swallows?
Gizzard
The gizzard has thick muscular walls and does the chewing that a beak cannot. Birds can hold food in the crop first, then pass it on to be ground.
Q 19Which wax, secreted by a sheep's skin glands and washed out of raw wool, is used in lip balms?
Lanolin
Lanolin takes its name from the Latin for wool and oil, and its waterproofing helps sheep shed rain from their coats. Sailors even smear it on propellers to keep barnacles off.
Q 20Which word is the highest USDA quality grade for beef, earned by only a small percentage of carcasses?
Prime
Prime sits at the top of eight USDA beef grades that run down to Cutter and Canner. In 2009 only about 2.9 percent of carcasses earned it.
Q 24Which red beef breed with a distinctive white face takes its name from an English county in the West Midlands?
Hereford
Hereford cattle were once wholly red, much like their Sussex cousins. The white face only became fixed in the breed by the end of the 18th century.
Q 25Which heat-tolerant beef breed was developed in the United States from humped zebu cattle originating in India?
Brahman
Brahman cattle shrug off heat, sunlight, humidity and parasites, and they have passed that toughness on to newer crosses such as the Brangus.
Q 26Which reddish-brown American pig breed is said to take its name from a stallion kept in New York state?
Duroc
Duroc is said to honour a stallion owned by Harry Kelsey in the 1820s. By one account the racehorse had itself been named after an aide of Napoleon.
Q 27Which fine-wooled sheep was once a Spanish monopoly so strict that exporting one risked the death penalty?
Merino
Merino flocks stayed locked inside Spain for centuries. Once they spread, the breed built Australia's wool trade, which had nearly 2 million sheep by 1830.
Q 28Which white-egg laying chicken breed takes its English name from the old name for the Italian port of Livorno?
Leghorn
Leghorn is the traditional English name for Livorno, the Tuscan port from which the first birds were shipped to North America. Americans at first called them simply Italians.
Q 29Which racing breed traces every modern pedigree back to just three stallions imported into England centuries ago?
Thoroughbred
Thoroughbred pedigrees all lead back to three foundation sires, the Byerley Turk, the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian, crossed with a larger number of mostly English mares.
Q 30Which meat goat breed from South Africa is recognised by its white body and red-brown head?
Boer
Boer goats were bred in the Eastern Cape from about 1920 for meat and for surviving on thorny scrub, and have since been exported to improve other breeds.