Cartilaginous Fish
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50 free Cartilaginous Fish trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cartilaginous fish are the sharks, rays, skates and their ghostly deep-sea cousins: animals that manage without a single true bone. Their flexible skeletons, rough skin and uncanny senses have barely needed an update in hundreds of millions of years, which makes them some of the most successful hunters the ocean has produced. This quiz turns the best fun facts about cartilaginous fish into questions. It covers how these animals are built and how they stay afloat, the extra senses they use to find a meal, the odd ways they raise their young, record holders large and small, prehistoric giants, and the parts they have played in films, food and folklore. The first questions are the easiest, and a short explanation follows every answer, so the quiz suits curious kids, students revising fish classification and anyone hosting a trivia night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A cartilaginous fish has a skeleton made of the same bendy tissue as which parts of the human body?
Ears and nose
Ears and nose tips are shaped by cartilage, the gristly tissue that forms a shark's whole skeleton. It is far lighter than bone, which helps these fish stay buoyant.
Q 02Fossils show sharks were already swimming the seas before which of these first appeared on Earth?
Trees
Trees came later: sharks appear in the fossil record around 450 million years ago. They have since survived five mass extinctions, including the one that ended the dinosaurs.
Q 03Which slow-swimming deep-water species, thought to live for centuries, is the longest-lived vertebrate known?
Greenland shark
The Greenland shark may live for 272 years or more, longer than any other animal with a backbone. Scientists worked out the ages by radiocarbon dating the cores of the sharks' eye lenses.
Q 04Shark skin, covered in tiny tooth-like scales, feels just like which workshop material?
Sandpaper
Sandpaper is the usual comparison, because the scales, known as dermal denticles, are built like miniature teeth. They all point toward the tail, which cuts friction with the water as the animal swims.
Q 05Which gentle, spotted giant that feeds mostly on plankton is the largest fish alive today?
Whale shark
The whale shark can exceed 12 metres in length, and each one's pattern of spots is as unique as a fingerprint. It even appears on the back of the Philippine 100-peso note.
Q 06Which extinct giant shark, among the largest predators that ever lived, is known mainly from its fossil teeth?
Megalodon
Megalodon means 'big tooth' in Greek. It was a giant mackerel shark that died out about 3.6 million years ago, and its cartilage skeleton rarely fossilised, so teeth are most of what remains.
Q 07A popular book wrongly claimed sharks never get which disease, launching a trade in cartilage pills?
Cancer
Cancer does strike sharks: researchers have recorded tumours in at least 18 species. Clinical trials of the supplements have found no benefit for patients.
Q 08Jelly-filled pores called ampullae of Lorenzini let sharks and rays detect what from prey hidden in sand?
Electric fields
Electric fields are given off by every living animal, and sharks sense them more keenly than any other creature. The same organs may help them navigate using Earth's magnetic field.
Q 09Whether it hatches from an egg case or is born live, a baby shark is known by which name?
Pup
Pup is the term, shared with young seals and dogs. Newborn sharks arrive fully formed and get no parental care, so they must fend for themselves at once.
Q 10Which species terrorised Amity Island as the monster in Steven Spielberg's 1975 film Jaws?
Great white shark
A great white shark was the villain, played by mechanical models that broke down so often that Spielberg mostly hinted at the monster instead. The crew nicknamed the props Bruce.
Q 11Which sharks have a wide, flattened head called a cephalofoil that sharpens their depth perception?
Hammerheads
Hammerheads gain better binocular vision from their wide-set eyes. They also use the broad head as a tool, pinning rays to the seabed before eating them.
Q 12Which giant ray takes its name from a Spanish and Portuguese word for a cloak or blanket?
Manta ray
The manta ray has the largest brain of any fish. Its name recalls the blanket-shaped traps that fishermen traditionally used to catch rays.
Q 13Beachcombers often find the leathery egg cases of skates and small sharks, which go by which folk name?
Mermaid's purse
Q 21Which small species gouges round plugs of flesh from dolphins and tuna, and has even damaged submarines?
Cookiecutter shark
The cookiecutter shark is named for its bite marks, which look as if they were stamped out with a baking tool. Also called the cigar shark, it grows only about half a metre long.
Q 22Which coastal predator has swum 700 miles up the Mississippi River to Illinois and also lives in Lake Nicaragua?
Bull shark
The bull shark can thrive in both salt and fresh water, a rare talent among its relatives. In Africa the same species is known as the Zambezi shark, after the river.
Q 23Which species has a scythe-like tail as long as its body, used as a whip to stun schools of fish?
Thresher shark
A mermaid's purse is woven from strands of collagen and can protect a growing embryo for anything from a few months to more than a year. Many have tendrils that anchor them to the seabed.
Q 14Which wildlife presenter died in 2006 when a stingray's barb pierced his chest on the Great Barrier Reef?
Steve Irwin
Steve Irwin, television's Crocodile Hunter, was filming an underwater documentary at Batt Reef. His death is believed to be the only fatal stingray strike ever captured on video.
Q 15With no gas-filled swim bladder, sharks stay buoyant thanks to an enormous, oil-rich version of which organ?
Liver
The liver of a shark can make up as much as 30% of its total body mass. Even so, the lift is limited, so sharks also use their fins like wings to hold their depth.
Q 16Some open-ocean sharks must keep swimming forward their whole lives in order to do what?
Breathe
To breathe, these sharks must drive oxygen-rich water in through the open mouth, and they would suffocate if held still. Bottom-dwellers such as nurse sharks can take in water while resting.
Q 17Most sharks have five to seven of which exposed openings on each side of the head, with no bony cover?
Gill slits
Gill slits stay uncovered in sharks, while bony fish tuck theirs beneath a hard flap. Rays carry the same openings on the underside of their flattened bodies.
Q 18Which naval weapon is named after a genus of rays that stun their prey with a powerful jolt?
Torpedo
The torpedo borrows its name from the rays, whose own name comes from a Latin word for sluggishness. A Roman physician recorded using the live fish to treat headaches and gout.
Q 19Which critically endangered family of giant rays carries a long, flat snout lined with teeth on both sides?
Sawfish
Sawfish swipe the toothed snout sideways to incapacitate passing prey, and can sense a hidden meal from about 40 centimetres away. All five species are critically endangered.
Q 20Hákarl, a pungent national dish of fermented shark meat hung to dry for months, comes from which country?
Iceland
Iceland's hákarl has to be cured because the fresh meat is poisonous, loaded with urea. The process leaves so much ammonia that first-time tasters often gag.
The thresher shark is named for that long, thresher-like tail. The best-known species has a second name too: the fox shark, echoing the Greek word for fox in its scientific name, Alopias.
Q 24Which pink-skinned deep-sea species, often called a living fossil, snatches prey by shooting its jaws forward?
Goblin shark
The goblin shark is the last survivor of a family about 125 million years old. Its jaws can spring out almost to the tip of its long, flat snout.
Q 25Which deep-water relatives of sharks are known informally as ghost sharks, ratfish and spookfish?
Chimaeras
Chimaeras crush their food with beak-like tooth plates instead of rows of sharp teeth. Those plates, likened to a rodent's incisors, earned them one more nickname: rabbit fish.
Q 26Which fish clamps onto sharks, rays and turtles with a sucker on top of its head, hitching a ride?
Remora
The remora's sucker is a reshaped dorsal fin lined with slats that grip by suction. In return for the lift, it picks parasites and loose skin off its host.
Q 27The ridged texture of shark skin inspired which piece of Olympic kit, first worn at the Sydney Games in 2000?
Swimsuits
Swimsuits in Speedo's Fastskin range copied the bumps and ridges of sharkskin to slip through the water. Later research suggested the pattern does little for humans, who move differently.
Q 28Renaissance Europeans believed fossil shark teeth found in rocks were the petrified what of dragons and snakes?
Tongues
Tongues was the answer of the day, hence the old name tongue stones. Nobles wore the fossils as pendants, trusting them to cure snake bites and neutralise poison.
Q 29Which sense organ, a row of pores along each flank, lets sharks and other fish feel vibrations in the water?
Lateral line
The lateral line picks up movement and vibration in the surrounding water. It lets a predator turn toward struggling prey before the target comes into view.
Q 30Which slow-moving plankton eater, the second-largest fish alive, cruises the surface with its huge mouth wide open?
Basking shark
The basking shark gets its name because it seems to be sunbathing as it feeds in the warmer water at the surface. For all its bulk, it is a harmless filter feeder.