Beluga Whale
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50 free Beluga Whale trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The beluga is the whale most people would know at a glance: small, bright white and wearing what looks like a permanent smile. It is also one of the strangest animals in the Arctic, with a body and a voice unlike any other whale's and a habit of turning up in places where no whale should be. These fun facts about beluga whales are set out as a quiz. The questions cover how belugas are built for a life among the floes, how they talk, feed, rest and raise their calves, what hunts them, and the people who have lived beside them, hunted them and put them on show. Famous individual belugas get their due as well, along with the animal's cameos in film, song and aviation. The questions run from easy openers to a few deep cuts, so they suit a classroom, a trivia night or anyone who simply likes whales. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In 1985 a Soviet icebreaker led some 2,000 trapped belugas to open sea by playing what on its loudspeakers?
Classical music
Classical music did it: the whales had refused to follow the icebreaker Moskva until the crew tried it. Local people had kept them alive until then by feeding them frozen fish.
Q 02NOC, a beluga kept by the US Navy, once made a diver surface in confusion by doing what?
Mimicking human speech
Mimicking human speech was NOC's trick: the diver thought a colleague had ordered him out of the water. To do it the whale dropped his voice several octaves below normal beluga calls.
Q 03A tame beluga that appeared off Norway in 2019 wearing a camera harness was widely suspected of being what?
A trained spy
A trained spy was the popular theory, since the harness was marked Equipment St Petersburg. Norwegians named him Hvaldimir, joining hval, their word for whale, to Vladimir.
Q 04Beluga caviar, among the world's costliest foods, comes not from the whale but from which fish?
Sturgeon
Sturgeon is the source: the critically endangered beluga sturgeon. Fish and whale are unrelated, and both take their name from the Russian word for white.
Q 05Which nickname did sailors give the beluga because of its constant chirps, squeals and whistles?
Sea canary
Sea canary is the name sailors gave the beluga long ago. Its repertoire also runs to clicks, clucks and even moos.
Q 06In 2009 a captive beluga in Harbin, China, saved a free diver paralysed by cramp by doing what?
Lifting her to the surface
Lifting her to the surface took one gentle grip: the whale held the diver's foot in its mouth and carried her up from the bottom of an icy pool.
Q 07Which Canadian children's singer released the 1980 album Baby Beluga after meeting a whale named Kavna?
Raffi
Raffi wrote the title song after meeting Kavna, a beluga at the Vancouver Aquarium. The album opens with recordings of real belugas calling to each other.
Q 08Which trick in the water, unusual among whales, can the highly manoeuvrable beluga pull off?
Swimming backwards
Swimming backwards is a beluga speciality. Built for agility rather than speed, the whale usually cruises at only 3 to 9 km/h.
Q 09The beluga is also called the white whale, but which kind of whale was Herman Melville's Moby Dick?
Sperm
Sperm whale is the species of Moby Dick. Melville modelled him on Mocha Dick, a real pale bull that whalers fought off Chile in the early 19th century.
Q 10Bailey, a beluga whose echolocation becomes key to the plot, appears in which Pixar film?
Finding Dory
Finding Dory introduces Bailey alongside Destiny, a nearsighted whale shark. The pair break out of their exhibit to help with a rescue.
Q 11Thanks to an unusual feature of its spine, a beluga can do what that most whales cannot?
Turn and nod its head
Turn and nod its head is the answer: its seven neck vertebrae are not fused, so a beluga can scan for prey and predators without rotating its body.
Q 12Adult belugas are famous for their white skin, but what colour are beluga calves in their first years?
Dark grey
Dark grey calves fade slowly as they grow. Females turn fully white at about seven years old and males at about nine.
Q 13Which Arctic whale is the beluga's closest living relative and the only other member of the family Monodontidae?
Narwhal
Q 21Which fruit shares its name with the bulbous forehead organ a beluga reshapes to focus its echolocation clicks?
Melon
Melon is the organ's name, a mass of fatty tissue that works as an acoustic lens. A beluga changes its shape by blowing air around its sinuses.
Q 22Why do belugas gather in shallow estuaries each summer to rub their bodies against gravel riverbeds?
To shed old skin
To shed old skin is the reason, in a yearly moult that is unusual among whales. Over the winter the outer layer thickens and can turn yellowish.
Q 23With teeth too small and blunt for chewing, how does a beluga get fish and shrimp into its mouth?
By suction
Narwhal is the answer, and the two can interbreed. A skull kept by an Inuk hunter was confirmed by DNA in 2019 as a hybrid of the pair, nicknamed a narluga.
Q 14Which feature of most whales and dolphins does the beluga lack, an absence that helps it swim beneath sea ice?
Dorsal fin
Dorsal fin is the missing part, replaced by a tough ridge that slides easily under ice floes. The genus name Delphinapterus means dolphin without a fin.
Q 15Which land predator catches belugas trapped at shrinking breathing holes, dragging them out onto the ice?
Polar bear
Polar bear attacks come when winter ice traps belugas far from open water. One bear of under 180 kg was recorded landing a whale that weighed 935 kg.
Q 16Which predator of belugas is kept from following them under sea ice by its own towering back fin?
Killer whale
Killer whale fins can stand 2 m tall, which stops the hunters getting close to breathing holes in the ice. Belugas also crowd into the shallows when the hunters are near.
Q 17About 40 percent of a beluga's body weight, far more than in most warm-water whales, is made up of what?
Blubber
Blubber up to 15 cm thick wraps the whole body except the head. It insulates the whale in near-freezing water and stores energy for lean months.
Q 18Two belugas retired from a Shanghai aquarium in 2019 were flown to an open-water sanctuary off which country?
Iceland
Iceland is home to the sanctuary, set in the Westman Islands off the south coast. The pair travelled about 6,000 miles by air, land and sea to reach it.
Q 19How do belugas, like dolphins, manage to sleep without losing the ability to surface and breathe?
With half the brain awake
With half the brain awake, a beluga never fully switches off. Deep sleep occurs in only one hemisphere at a time, as in other toothed whales.
Q 20Which biological trait, found in only a handful of mammals, do female belugas share with women?
Menopause
Menopause is known in only a handful of species, nearly all of them toothed whales. A beluga's fertility declines from about 25, and no births are recorded after 41.
By suction, pulling prey in and swallowing it whole. That limits the menu to animals small enough not to stick in the whale's throat.
Q 24Which US state's official marine fossil is a beluga skeleton unearthed by railroad workers in 1849?
Vermont
Vermont has the Charlotte whale, dug from a field more than 150 miles from the ocean. It swam in the Champlain Sea, an arm of the Atlantic that flooded the region after the ice age.
Q 25Which Canadian town on Hudson Bay sees thousands of belugas gather in its river estuary every summer?
Churchill
Churchill, Manitoba, draws the whales each July and August, when they move into the warmer river mouth to calve.
Q 26Belugas of which Canadian river have carried so many pollutants that their carcasses were treated as toxic waste?
St. Lawrence
St. Lawrence belugas live far south of other populations, downstream of heavy industry. A study of 129 adults found that 27 percent had suffered cancer.
Q 27Which Alaskan waterway beside Anchorage holds an isolated, endangered population of only a few hundred belugas?
Cook Inlet
Cook Inlet belugas stay all year, sharing the water with Alaska's biggest city and main transport hub. They were listed as endangered in 2008.
Q 28Which showman exhibited the first captive beluga at his New York museum in 1861?
P. T. Barnum
P. T. Barnum made the beluga one of the first whales ever kept in captivity. It is still among the most commonly kept, in aquariums across three continents.
Q 29In 1966 a beluga nicknamed Moby Dick caused a sensation by swimming far up which European river?
Rhine
Rhine skippers who reported the whale near Duisburg were given alcohol tests by disbelieving police. Its skin, blotched by the filthy water, is said to have helped stir German environmentalism.
Q 30Benny, a lone beluga that lingered near Gravesend for months in 2018, was living in which river's estuary?
Thames
Thames sightings of a beluga had last been recorded in 1913. Benny stayed into the winter, delaying work on a planned tunnel, and left in early 2019.