Charles Darwin Trivia
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60 free Charles Darwin trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Charles Darwin trivia quiz follows the man from a Shrewsbury childhood through medical school, Cambridge, five years aboard HMS Beagle and the long, nervous road to On the Origin of Species. The easy questions cover the landmarks: where he was born, the ship, the captain, the islands, the book and the abbey where he was buried. From there it digs into the fossils he dug up in Patagonia, the birds he mislabelled, the earthquake in Chile and the letter from Wallace that forced his hand. The harder questions are for readers of the biographies: the taxidermy teacher who was a freed slave, the Glutton Club, the exam placing, the eight years of barnacles, the spa town, the publisher, the size of the first print run, the orchid prediction that took forty years to confirm and the failed theory of heredity he called pangenesis. Every answer was checked against Darwin's encyclopaedia entry before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy it, our biology and famous scientists quizzes carry on from here.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which town was Charles Darwin born?
Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury: at school there, his home chemistry experiments earned him the nickname 'Gas' and a public rebuke from the headmaster.
Q 02Both of Darwin's grandfathers were prominent campaigners for what?
Abolition of slavery
Abolition of slavery: at Bahia in Brazil, Darwin argued with his captain, who defended slavery, and was briefly banished from the captain's table.
Q 03Darwin's grandfather Erasmus anticipated ideas of evolution and common descent in which 1794 work?
Zoonomia
Zoonomia: this medical treatise suggested all warm-blooded animals may have arisen from 'one living filament'; Charles said it had no effect on him, yet allowed such early views may have favoured his own.
Q 04Where did Darwin first go to university, to study medicine?
Edinburgh
Edinburgh: he rushed out of the only two operations he watched, in the days before anaesthetics, and neglected medicine for natural history.
Q 05Which skill did the young Darwin learn from John Edmonstone, who had travelled with explorer Charles Waterton?
Taxidermy
Taxidermy: Darwin wrote home that lessons cost a guinea for an hour every day for two months, and he often lingered to talk with his teacher.
Q 06Which fancy birds did Darwin breed himself while gathering evidence for On the Origin of Species?
Pigeons
Pigeons: the book opens with their astonishing variety of breeds, all descended from the wild rock dove, to show what selection can do.
Q 07Darwin's father sent him to Christ's College, Cambridge in 1828 as the first step towards which career?
Country parson
Country parson: his father chose the Church once Charles clearly didn't want to be a physician, and at the time Charles believed every word of the Bible.
Q 08What did members of the 'Glutton Club' that Darwin joined at Cambridge do?
Ate exotic birds and beasts
Ate exotic birds and beasts: they tried hawk and bittern, but gave up after an old brown owl proved 'indescribable'.
Q 09On the Beagle voyage Darwin mistakenly ate which bird that he had intended to study?
A rhea
The remains were salvaged and the smaller species was later named Rhea darwinii in his honour.
Q 10Darwin's second cousin William Darwin Fox introduced him to which hobby at Cambridge?
Beetle collecting
Beetle collecting: holding a beetle in each hand, he once popped one into his mouth to grab a third, and it squirted a fluid that burnt his tongue.
Q 11At Cambridge, Darwin was known to the dons as 'the man who walks with' which botany professor?
John Stevens Henslow
John Stevens Henslow: this mentor later proposed Darwin for the self-funded naturalist's place on HMS Beagle.
Q 12Cramming for his Cambridge finals, Darwin delighted in the logic of which theologian?
William Paley
William Paley: Darwin later wrote that Paley's argument from design, once so conclusive to him, 'fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered'.
Q 13Just before the Beagle voyage, Darwin toured Wales mapping rock strata with which geologist?
Adam Sedgwick
Q 21Darwin explained coral atolls as reefs that kept growing while the islands they ringed were doing what?
Sinking
Sinking: he worked the whole theory out on the west coast of South America, before he had ever seen a true coral reef.
Q 22Which Galapagos animals did the islands' vice-governor say he could trace to their home island with certainty?
Tortoises
Tortoises: yet Darwin failed to collect them properly, and the ones taken aboard were kept as food rather than for study.
Q 23Struck by Australia's strange animals, Darwin mused that it was almost as though what?
Two Creators had been at work
Adam Sedgwick: the same mentor later told Darwin he had read On the Origin of Species 'with more pain than pleasure'.
Q 14Who was the captain of HMS Beagle on Darwin's voyage?
Robert FitzRoy
Robert FitzRoy: he wanted a gentleman companion rather than 'a mere collector', and in 1854 he founded what became the Met Office.
Q 15Who persuaded Darwin's reluctant father to let him join the Beagle, and to pay for it?
His uncle Josiah
His uncle Josiah: Darwin had already written to refuse the offer when his uncle talked his father round.
Q 16While Darwin explored ashore, what was the Beagle's main task?
Charting coastlines
Charting coastlines: Darwin was told the voyage would last two years, but it lasted almost five.
Q 17Which book, a gift from the Beagle's captain, taught Darwin that land slowly rises and falls over immense time?
Principles of Geology
Principles of Geology: at his very first stop, in the Cape Verde islands, Darwin was already reading the rocks Lyell's way.
Q 18Darwin identified the giant Megatherium, found in Patagonia, as an extinct kind of what?
Ground sloth
Ground sloth: following Cuvier, Darwin credited it with the bony armour he had found, though the plates came from Glyptodon, a giant armadillo relative.
Q 19Which anatomist described the fossil bones Darwin brought back from South America?
Richard Owen
Richard Owen: he later became a fierce critic of Darwin's theory, and was shown wrong when he claimed human brains had parts missing in apes.
Q 20Which 1835 disaster in Chile, witnessed by Darwin, raised mussel beds still clinging to rocks above high tide?
An earthquake
An earthquake: when the Beagle reached Concepción soon afterwards, Darwin found the city in ruins.
Two Creators had been at work: that evening he watched wild platypuses diving in a dry-country creek, and found stuffed ones gave no true idea of them.
Q 24At which Cornish port did the Beagle finally anchor on 2 October 1836?
Falmouth
Falmouth: from there Darwin headed home, and was soon hunting for experts to describe his collections.
Q 25Which ornithologist announced Darwin's Galapagos birds were twelve species of finch?
John Gould
John Gould: Darwin had taken the birds for a mix of blackbirds, 'gros-beaks' and finches, and hadn't labelled his by island.
Q 26In 1838, reading which economist made it strike Darwin at once that favourable variations would tend to survive?
Thomas Malthus
Thomas Malthus: his warning that unchecked human numbers double every twenty-five years showed Darwin how fierce the struggle for existence must be.
Q 27In his 1838 notes weighing up marriage, Darwin wrote that a wife would be 'better than a' what?
Dog
Dog: having decided in favour of marriage, he proposed to Emma that November.
Q 28What was the maiden name of Emma, the first cousin Darwin married in 1839?
Wedgwood
Wedgwood: before the wedding, Emma wrote that honest doubts about religion cannot be a sin, but would be 'a painful void between us'.
Q 29In 1844 Darwin left his wife a 'most solemn and last request' to spend £400 on what if he died?
Publishing his theory
Publishing his theory: he had just finished a sketch of it, yet he waited more than a decade to publish it himself.
Q 30Down House, where Darwin lived from 1842 until his death, is in which county?
Kent
Kent: Darwin and Emma both preferred rural life, and moved there to escape London's coal smoke.