Asian Elephant
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40 free Asian Elephant trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Asian elephants are smaller than their African cousins, but they are every bit as surprising. They are social, long-lived and clever, with a trunk that works like a hand and a history tied to people since the Bronze Age. This quiz gathers the best fun facts about the species: how the trunk and tusks really work, what herds and lone bulls get up to, how calves grow, and which elephants became famous enough to meet emperors and artists. There are questions on gods and legends, royal traditions and the threats wild herds face. It suits animal lovers, pupils working on a project, zoo visitors and quiz hosts after a nature round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which extinct animals were closer relatives of the Asian elephant than living African elephants are?
Mammoths
Mammoths sit inside the living elephant family tree, nearer to Asian elephants than African ones; the last of them survived on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago.
Q 02The tusks of a bull Asian elephant are greatly enlarged versions of which teeth in the upper jaw?
Incisors
Incisors, not canines, grow into an elephant's tusks: they are the second pair in the upper jaw, and most cow Asian elephants have only tiny ones or none.
Q 03Which country, once Lan Xang, the 'Land of a Million Elephants', has the Asian elephant as its national animal?
Laos
Laos shares the honour with Thailand, and its forerunner Lan Xang, founded by Fa Ngum in 1353, lasted for three and a half centuries.
Q 04What is the yearly period called when a bull Asian elephant's testosterone soars and he turns aggressive?
Musth
Musth comes from an Urdu term for intoxication: testosterone can reach up to 100 times its usual level, and a tar-like fluid seeps from glands on the bull's temples.
Q 05Hansken, an Asian elephant that toured 17th-century Europe doing tricks, was sketched by which Dutch artist?
Rembrandt
Rembrandt drew Hansken in chalk after seeing her in Amsterdam in 1637; a skeleton in Florence thought to be hers is the reference specimen for the whole species.
Q 06Kosik, an Asian elephant at a South Korean theme park, made headlines in 2006 by using his trunk to imitate what?
Human speech
Human speech was Kosik's party trick: with his trunk in his mouth he sounded out Korean words including those for yes, no, sit and lie down.
Q 07Which movement is impossible for an Asian elephant, as for all elephants, along with trotting and galloping?
Jumping
Jumping is beyond any elephant, yet they walk backwards easily and can swim for up to six hours without touching the bottom.
Q 08Asian elephants make deep growls too low-pitched for people to hear; what is this kind of sound called?
Infrasound
Infrasound is only part of the repertoire: a growl that resonates in the trunk becomes a rumble, and for long-distance calls it swells into a roar.
Q 09Which predators have been recorded killing adult Asian elephants in India's Corbett and Kaziranga national parks?
Tigers
Tigers killed a 20-year-old cow in Corbett and, hunting together, a sick bull in Kaziranga; healthy adult elephants are otherwise almost immune to predators.
Q 10Asian elephants of which colour, sacred to Siam's kings, gave English a phrase for a costly, unwanted possession?
White
White elephants are not truly white but pale and pinkish, and Thai law long required anyone who found one to present it to the king.
Q 11Apart from other elephants, which animals join the little hyraxes as the Asian elephant's closest living relatives?
Manatees
Manatees and dugongs, known as sirenians, sit with elephants and hyraxes in a clade called Paenungulata, part of the wider Afrotheria.
Q 12Which Hindu god, revered as the remover of obstacles, has an elephant's head with one whole tusk and one broken?
Ganesha
Ganesha's earliest name was Ekadanta, meaning One Tusked, and some of his oldest images show him holding the broken tusk in his own hand.
Q 13In chaturanga, the Indian ancestor of chess, the elephant piece was the forerunner of which modern chessman?
Bishop
Bishop is the modern name for the old alfil, meaning elephant, which moved two squares diagonally; Spanish players call the piece an alfil to this day.
Q 21Which IUCN Red List category has the Asian elephant held since 1986, its numbers having at least halved?
Endangered
Endangered status reflects a fall of at least 50% over three elephant generations, about 60 to 75 years, driven by habitat loss and poaching.
Q 22Engraved seals from which Bronze Age civilisation give the earliest signs of Asian elephants being kept in captivity?
Indus Valley
Indus Valley sites such as Mohenjo-daro have also yielded elephant remains and clay models, suggesting the animals were tamed and put to work.
Q 23Which conqueror's army faced the armoured war elephants of King Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BC?
Alexander the Great
Q 14Which island's so-called pygmy elephants may descend from a captive herd of Asian elephants kept by a sultan?
Borneo
Borneo's elephants live in the island's north-east and are notably tame; genetic work suggests they split from other Asian elephants about 300,000 years ago.
Q 15What Hindi-derived name is given to the keeper who traditionally stays with one Asian elephant all its working life?
Mahout
Mahout traces back to the Sanskrit mahamatra, and mahouts have ridden and trained elephants since antiquity, in war as well as at work.
Q 16What is the seat or carriage on an Asian elephant's back called, once used by rulers for processions and hunting?
Howdah
Howdah comes, through Hindi, from an Arabic word for a bed carried by a camel, and ancient war elephants bore castle-like versions holding archers.
Q 17Which term for animals most active at dawn and dusk describes Asian elephants, which feed for much of the day?
Crepuscular
Crepuscular habits leave plenty of time to eat: Asian elephants spend 50 to 75% of the day feeding, on at least 112 different plant species.
Q 18What are the temporary all-male bands called that young bull Asian elephants may join after leaving their mothers?
Bachelor groups
Bachelor groups are loose and short-lived: bulls leave at adolescence, live mostly alone, and join the cow herds only for a while to mate.
Q 19Which naturalist named the Asian elephant in 1758, drawing partly on specimens later shown to be African elephants?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus named the species in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae, leaning heavily on a 1693 description of an elephant skeleton by John Ray.
Q 20Which country's only wild Asian elephants, a few hundred animals, live in Xishuangbanna and two nearby prefectures?
China
China gives its elephants first-level protection, and Xishuangbanna has planted bananas and bamboo as food bases to ease clashes with people.
Alexander the Great won after his infantry drove the elephants back with javelins and axes; by one ancient tally it cost him more men than Gaugamela.
Q 24Abul-Abbas, an elephant sent from Baghdad by the caliph Harun al-Rashid, was a gift for which European emperor?
Charlemagne
Charlemagne received Abul-Abbas at Aachen in July 802, after the elephant had landed near Genoa and been marched over the Alps.
Q 25Hanno, an elephant shipped from Lisbon to Rome in 1514, was the gift of Portugal's King Manuel I to which pope?
Leo X
Pope Leo X doted on Hanno, and when the elephant died two years after arriving, Raphael designed a memorial fresco and the pope himself wrote the epitaph.
Q 26During Kandy's Esala Perahera, the lead tusker carries a casket in honour of which sacred Buddhist relic?
The Buddha's tooth
The Buddha's tooth relic reached the island in the 4th century; a tusker named Raja bore its casket for 37 years and was declared a national treasure.
Q 27In Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book stories, which elephant leader takes his name from the Hindi word for elephant?
Hathi
Hathi heads the elephant troop, stands for order and the Law of the Jungle, and is famed for his patience, never hurrying unless he must.
Q 28Ruby, an Asian elephant at the Phoenix Zoo, won fame for which activity after scratching the dirt with a stick?
Painting
Painting came easily to Ruby: handed a brush by her keepers, she finished an abstract picture in about ten minutes, and her work sold for as much as $25,000.
Q 29A haemorrhagic disease that is often fatal to young Asian elephant calves is caused by which family of viruses?
Herpesviruses
Herpesviruses known as EEHV kill up to 80% of severely affected Asian elephants, yet healthy herd-mates can carry and shed them in trunk secretions.
Q 30Which southern Indian state is home to more wild Asian elephants than any other in the country?
Karnataka
Karnataka's elephants are spread over roughly 38,000 square kilometres of the state, by one estimate.