Beetles
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50 free Beetles trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Beetles are the great success story of the animal kingdom. No other order of insects comes close to their variety: they glow, swim, dig, sprint and spray, and they have been doing it since before the dinosaurs. This quiz works through the order Coleoptera from several angles: how a beetle's body is built and how it grows, the best-known families and what sets each apart, the giants and the miniatures, the species that defend themselves in startling ways, and the ones that have ruined harvests, toppled trees or ended up in myths, novels and jewellery boxes. It suits anyone revising entomology, naturalists who like to put a name to what they find under a log, and quiz fans who simply enjoy a strange fact. Questions run from easy openers to a handful for the specialist, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which insect defends itself by firing a near-boiling chemical spray from its rear with an audible pop?
Bombardier beetle
The bombardier beetle mixes hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide in a chamber in its abdomen, and the reaction heats the spray to near the boiling point of water. It can fire roughly 20 times before running dry.
Q 02African dung beetles roll their balls in a straight line at night by steering with which sky feature?
The Milky Way
The Milky Way is their compass: dung beetles are the only insects known to orient by its glow. A straight path gets the ball away from the dung pile before another beetle can steal it.
Q 03The 'lady' in the name ladybird honours which religious figure, often shown in a red cloak in early art?
The Virgin Mary
The Virgin Mary was known as Our Lady, and in Britain the insects were first called Our Lady's birds. The seven spots of the common European species were said to stand for her seven joys and seven sorrows.
Q 04Males of which insect group wrestle rivals with hugely enlarged jaws?
Stag beetles
Stag beetles are named for the males' oversized mandibles, which resemble a stag's antlers and are used to wrestle rivals off favoured mating sites. The European species is the largest beetle on the continent.
Q 05In which country are horned rhinoceros beetles kept as popular pets?
Japan
Japan is so fond of pet beetles that vending machines dispensing live ones were developed there in 1999. Rhinoceros beetles were once gathered from the wild but are now also bred in captivity.
Q 06Counting the male's long horn, which tropical American insect is the longest of all beetles at up to 17 cm?
Hercules beetle
The Hercules beetle can reach 173 mm with its horn included. Fighting males grab a rival between that horn and a smaller one on the head, then lift and throw him.
Q 07Which naturalist, as a Cambridge student, popped a beetle into his mouth to free a hand for another?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was already holding a beetle in each hand when he spotted a third around 1828. The one in his mouth squirted acrid fluid, so he spat it out and the third escaped too.
Q 08Which predatory insects chase prey in bursts, sprinting at up to 9 km/h and then stopping to look again?
Tiger beetles
Tiger beetles may simply outrun their own eyesight, moving too fast for their visual system to process images. The quickest species covers about 125 of its own body lengths every second.
Q 09Which wood-boring insect of old oak buildings attracts a mate by knocking its head against the timber?
Deathwatch beetle
The deathwatch beetle's tapping carried through silent houses during bedside vigils for the dying, so it was long feared as an omen of death. It prefers oak that has been dead for about sixty years.
Q 10Which darkling beetle larvae, long sold as pet food, were approved as human food in the European Union in 2021?
Mealworms
Mealworms are not worms at all but the young of the yellow mealworm beetle, Tenebrio molitor. They are rich enough in nutrients to go into livestock rations, and can even break down polystyrene.
Q 11What are the hardened front wings called that cover a beetle's delicate hindwings like a pair of cases?
Elytra
Elytra swing open so that the folded wings beneath can extend for take-off. Many scarabs and jewel beetles can even stay airborne with them closed.
Q 12In a beetle's complete metamorphosis, like a butterfly's, which life stage comes between larva and adult?
Pupa
Pupa is the resting stage in which a grub's body is rebuilt into an adult beetle. Some larvae build a cocoon around themselves first, at the end of their final moult.
Q 13Beetles are the largest order of insects; roughly how many species have scientists described so far?
400,000
About 400,000 described species means roughly one in four known animal species is a beetle. New ones are found so often that estimates of the true total run from 0.9 to 2.1 million.
Q 21Which insects of the family Gyrinidae have each eye divided into one part above the waterline and one below?
Whirligig beetles
Whirligig beetles are named for a different habit: swimming in rapid circles when alarmed. Their split eyes recall those of the four-eyed fish, which also live at the surface.
Q 22Which African scarabs have grubs that can weigh 100 grams, putting them among the largest insects on Earth?
Goliath beetles
Goliath beetles weigh about twice as much as grubs as they do as adults. In captivity the larvae need so much protein that keepers raise them on dry cat and dog food.
Q 23Natural history museums keep colonies of dermestid beetles to carry out which delicate job?
Q 14Which scarab-headed Egyptian god was thought to roll the sun across the sky as a beetle rolls a dung ball?
Khepri
Khepri was the god of the rising sun, and his name means he who has come into being. The beetle seemed to create itself out of nothing, just as the god was said to have done.
Q 15Enterprise, Alabama, raised a monument to the boll weevil, a beetle that had ravaged which local crop?
Cotton
Cotton had dominated the town's economy until the weevil arrived and forced farmers to diversify. The 1919 monument thanks the pest for pushing Enterprise towards mixed farming and manufacturing.
Q 16Which ten-striped crop pest did East Germany call the Amikäfer, claiming American planes had dropped it?
Colorado beetle
The Colorado beetle, a potato pest native to the Rocky Mountains, was spreading across Europe at the time. Several Warsaw Pact states blamed the CIA for the infestations.
Q 17The toxin cantharidin, once used as an aphrodisiac, comes from which metallic green beetle with a misleading name?
Spanish fly
Spanish fly is a blister beetle found mainly in southern Europe, and its reputed effect was really irritation of the urinary tract. In 1954 a man was jailed after sweets he had laced with it killed two women.
Q 18Photinus carolinus fireflies draw crowds by flashing in unison each June at Elkmont, in which US national park?
Great Smoky Mountains
Great Smoky Mountains crowds are so large that driving and parking are strictly regulated during the two-week mating season. Photinus carolinus was the first North American firefly found to flash in sync.
Q 19Fireflies produce their cold light when an enzyme oxidises which compound in their light organs?
Luciferin
Luciferin gives off a cold light with no infrared or ultraviolet in it. The enzyme that triggers the reaction, luciferase, is now used in forensics and medicine to detect the energy molecule ATP.
Q 20Which insects of the family Elateridae can snap a spine into a notch on the chest, bouncing themselves into the air?
Click beetles
Click beetles make a sharp snapping sound as they launch, which is how they got their name. Their tough, soil-dwelling larvae are the wireworms that damage potato, maize and wheat crops.
Cleaning skeletons
Cleaning skeletons is a job the larvae do by eating the soft tissue off the bones. Forensic scientists also study them on corpses to help estimate the time since death.
Q 24Male jewel beetles won researchers an Ig Nobel Prize after being found trying to mate with which discarded objects?
Beer bottles
Beer bottles of a stubby brown kind have glass bumps that catch the light like the surface of a giant female. Males gather on them and try to mate.
Q 25Head-stander beetles of the Namib Desert climb dunes at night and tilt their bodies to drink water collected from what?
Fog
Fog condenses on the beetle's upturned back and the droplets run down into its mouth. The trick, called fog-basking, is known in only two species.
Q 26Which British geneticist reputedly told theologians that the Creator must have an unusual fondness for beetles?
J. B. S. Haldane
J. B. S. Haldane was pointing at sheer numbers: beetles make up almost 40% of all described arthropods. He had been asked what the natural world revealed about the mind of its maker.
Q 27Aristotle named beetles Coleoptera, joining the Greek pteron, a wing, to koleos, meaning what?
Sheath
Sheath describes the hardened forewings that fold over a beetle's back. Those tough cases set beetles apart from most other insects.
Q 28Which insects prepare a dead mouse or bird as a nursery, where both parents regurgitate flesh for their larvae?
Burying beetles
Burying beetles fight over a carcass until one pair remains, then dig it into the soil to hide it from competitors. Care by both parents is rare among insects that do not live in colonies.
Q 29Bark beetles of the genus Scolytus carry the spores that cause which tree plague of Europe and North America?
Dutch elm disease
Dutch elm disease is named not for where it began but for the Dutch scientists who identified it, starting with Bea Schwarz in 1921. Infected trees plug their own water vessels trying to stop the spread.
Q 30Which American author wrote The Gold-Bug, in which a scarab-like beetle leads to a pirate's buried treasure?
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe won a newspaper contest with the tale, and the $100 prize was probably the largest sum he ever received for a single work. Its code-breaking plot helped make cryptograms popular.