Australian Animals
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Australian Animals trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Australia spent tens of millions of years cut off from everything else, and its animals show it: a mammal that lays eggs and hunts by electricity, a marsupial whose droppings are cubes, a bird that fought the army to a standstill, and more venomous snakes than harmless ones. Some 69% of its mammals and 93% of its reptiles live nowhere else. These 50 questions cover the famous and the odd: why a joey is the size of a lima bean, what koalas' closest relatives are, the scientists who thought the platypus was a hoax, the wombat's Ig Nobel Prize, the thylacine's last day at Hobart Zoo, the Lewis guns of the Emu War, cassowary casques, swooping magpies, quokka selfies, dingo fences, the inland taipan's lost 90 years, the thorny devil's skin that drinks, and the cane toads that were meant to save sugar cane. Easy questions stick to kangaroos and koalas; the hardest ask about Aboriginal language origins and state emblems. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a classroom or pub night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which is the largest of all kangaroo species?
Red
Red kangaroo females can freeze an embryo's development until their previous baby has left the pouch.
Q 02What is a baby kangaroo called?
Joey
A joey dives back into its mother's pouch whenever danger threatens, even after it has started leaving to feed.
Q 03Roughly how big is a newborn kangaroo?
A jellybean
A jellybean-sized newborn climbs into the pouch on its own, after a pregnancy of only about 33 days.
Q 04Which big-headed Australian night bird is often mistaken for an owl?
Tawny frogmouth
Tawny frogmouth isn't an owl: its weak feet lack talons, so it snaps up insects with its wide beak and hides by posing as a broken branch.
Q 05Kangaroos get around mainly by doing what?
Hopping on two legs
Hopping on two legs is only half the story: male kangaroos also lean back on their tails to box and kick rivals.
Q 06What is a group of kangaroos called?
A mob
A mob usually holds 10 or more kangaroos, and mobs gather at dusk to feed where food is most plentiful.
Q 07What are the koala's closest living relatives?
Wombats
Wombats, the koala's closest relatives, carry their young in a backward-facing pouch that keeps soil out while they dig.
Q 08Koalas sleep up to 20 hours a day mainly because their leafy diet is what?
Low in energy
Low in energy: their leaves give koalas so few calories that they save energy by moving little and sleeping most of the day.
Q 09Which tree's leaves make up most of a koala's diet?
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus leaves are so hard to digest that young koalas first eat pap, a soft faeces from their mother thought to supply the right gut bacteria.
Q 10Which mouse-sized Australian marsupial is the world's smallest gliding mammal?
Feathertail glider
Feathertail glider is named for its feather-like tail, and its grippy feet cling to smooth surfaces, even vertical glass in experiments.
Q 11How does the platypus find prey underwater with its eyes, ears and nose shut?
Electrolocation
Electrolocation finds the prey, which the platypus stows in its cheek pouches and eats back at the surface.
Q 12Where does a male platypus deliver its venom from?
A hind-foot spur
A hind-foot spur on each male delivers venom that causes excruciating pain in people, though it isn't fatal to them.
Q 13The platypus and four species of echidna are the only living mammals that do what?
Lay eggs
Lay eggs: yet monotremes still feed their young milk, which seeps from patches of skin because they have no teats.
Q 21What earned the thylacine its 'tiger' nickname?
Its stripes
Its stripes, 15 to 20 dark bands across the back, earned the tiger name, while its wolf-like appearance earned it the name Tasmanian wolf too.
Q 22The emu is Australia's tallest native bird; which living bird is taller?
The ostrich
The ostrich is taller, but the emu is a long-distance walker that roams hundreds of kilometres to follow food.
Q 23Which emu parent incubates the eggs and raises the chicks?
The male
The male sits on the eggs without eating, drinking or even leaving the nest, and the chicks stay with him for months after hatching.
Q 14What is a baby echidna called?
Puggle
Puggle is the name for a baby echidna, which lives in its mother's pouch until its spines grow and she moves it to a burrow.
Q 15Which form do a wombat's droppings take?
Cube-shaped
Cube-shaped droppings are used to mark territory, and scientists think cubes stay put where round ones would roll away.
Q 16When first recorded in 1798, the wombat was said to look much like which animal?
A badger
A badger: the 1798 record described a fat, short-legged 'Whom-batt', and settlers went on calling wombats badgers.
Q 17Which marsupial is the second-largest living carnivorous marsupial, after the Tasmanian devil?
Spotted-tailed quoll
Spotted-tailed quoll kills its prey by leaping onto its back and biting the neck or the back of the skull.
Q 18What has devastated Tasmania's wild devils since the 1990s?
A facial tumour disease
A facial tumour disease has cut devil numbers so sharply that the species was declared endangered in 2008.
Q 19Pound for pound, the Tasmanian devil has one of the most powerful what among predatory land mammals?
Bites
Bites this strong let a devil eat almost a whole carcass, bones included.
Q 20Where did the last known thylacine die in 1936?
Hobart Zoo
Hobart Zoo's last thylacine died on 7 September 1936, a date now marked each year as Australia's National Threatened Species Day.
Q 24Which Australian bird decorates its courtship display area with blue objects like bottle tops and straws?
Satin bowerbird
Satin bowerbird males also strut and dance for visiting females, who then build the nest and do all the incubating alone.
Q 25What weapons did Australian soldiers use in the 1932 Emu War?
Lewis machine-guns
Lewis machine-guns proved hopeless as the emus split into small, fast groups, and the cull was abandoned as uneconomic.
Q 26The laughing kookaburra belongs to which bird family?
Kingfishers
Kingfishers include the laughing kookaburra, whose famous laugh is really a territorial call telling other birds to keep away.
Q 27Which Australian rainforest bird can inflict fatal injuries with a dagger-like claw on its inner toe?
Cassowary
Cassowary attacks can be fatal, yet the birds are wary of people and usually retreat into the rainforest unless cornered.
Q 28What is the horn-like helmet on Australia's big rainforest ratite called?
Casque
Casque: it may amplify the bird's very low booming calls, though no one knows for sure what it is for.
Q 29Which bird is famous for swooping cyclists and walkers in spring?
Magpie
Magpie swoopers are a small minority, almost always males defending nests, and some target only particular people.
Q 30Which is the largest bird of prey in Australia?
Wedge-tailed eagle
Wedge-tailed eagles eat mostly carrion such as roadkill, and the spread of rabbits helped their numbers recover.