Cloning Trivia
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96 free Cloning trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This cloning trivia quiz covers the science, the animals and the arguments. The easy end is Dolly: the breed, the lab, the body part her cell came from and the country singer she was named after. From there it moves through the technique itself, somatic cell nuclear transfer, why clones are never quite perfect copies, why a cloned calico cat came out a different colour, and how many eggs it took to make one lamb. The middle of the quiz is a parade of firsts: the 1952 frogs, the Chinese carp of 1963, the first cloned mule and horse in 2003, CopyCat, Snuppy the Afghan hound, the black-footed ferret cloned from a female dead for 30 years, the Przewalski's horse from 1980 tissue, and Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, the macaques who finally proved primates could be cloned the Dolly way. It also visits the darker corners: the South Korean scientist whose human-cloning papers were faked, the UFO religion that announced a baby clone called Eve, and the ibex that became the only species to go extinct twice. It closes with cloning in fiction, from Brave New World to The Boys from Brazil. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on cloning, Dolly and the individual animals and people involved, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty-four questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 96 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Dolly the sheep was the first mammal cloned from what?
An adult body cell
An adult body cell: scientists had believed a specialised adult cell kept only the instructions for its own job, so cloning from one seemed impossible.
Q 02From which part of the donor sheep's body was Dolly's cell taken?
The udder
The udder: because the cell came from a mammary gland, the lamb was named after Dolly Parton.
Q 03In Jurassic Park, where do scientists find the dinosaur DNA they use for cloning?
In insects trapped in amber
In insects trapped in amber: in reality, a study of dated fossil bones found DNA has a half-life of about 521 years, far too short to survive from the dinosaur age.
Q 04At which research institute was Dolly the sheep cloned?
Roslin Institute
Roslin Institute: cloning was the next step in its research into genetically modified livestock that could pass new traits to their offspring.
Q 05In Star Wars, the Republic's army of clone troopers was grown from which bounty hunter's DNA?
Jango Fett
Jango Fett: as part of the deal, he kept one unaltered clone to raise as his son, Boba Fett.
Q 06Which Kazuo Ishiguro novel follows three friends from an English boarding school who turn out to be clones?
Never Let Me Go
Never Let Me Go: the students eventually learn they were created to donate their vital organs once they reach adulthood.
Q 07Which US agency ruled food from cloned animals safe?
FDA
FDA: livestock are cloned to copy animals with prized traits, such as cows with high milk production.
Q 08Who led the team that cloned Dolly?
Ian Wilmut
Ian Wilmut: he had hired Keith Campbell, whose knowledge of the cell cycle proved instrumental in getting the cloning technique to work.
Q 09Dolly was the only survivor of how many cloning attempts?
Hundreds
Hundreds: to make it work, the team first forced the donor cells into a dormant phase so the eggs would accept their nuclei.
Q 10What fused the cells that made Dolly?
Electricity
Electricity: one ewe gave the cell, another the egg and a third carried the embryo, which is why Dolly is said to have had three mothers.
Q 11Which condition made Dolly the sheep walk stiffly?
Arthritis
Arthritis: it fuelled suspicion that clones age early.
Q 12What condition led to Dolly the sheep being euthanised?
A progressive lung disease
A progressive lung disease: scientists linked it to a virus-caused cancer common in sheep kept indoors, which had killed others in her flock, not to cloning.
Q 13Which finding fuelled speculation that Dolly had been born genetically 'old'?
Her short telomeres
Her short telomeres: they reflected her six-year-old donor's age and time in lab culture, because nuclear transfer does not restore telomere length.
Q 21How do identical twins, nature's own clones, form?
A fertilised egg splits
A fertilised egg splits: labs mimic this by splitting early embryos, which is how the cloned rhesus monkey Tetra was made.
Q 22Which German embryologist split salamander embryos with a loop of baby hair, an early step toward cloning?
Hans Spemann
Hans Spemann: his experiments showed that half of an early embryo could still grow into a whole animal.
Q 23Robert Briggs and Thomas King cloned which animal in 1952?
Northern leopard frog
Northern leopard frog: Briggs and King moved nuclei from early embryo cells into emptied frog eggs and grew tadpoles, a first step toward cloning animals.
Q 14Where is Dolly's preserved body displayed?
National Museum of Scotland
National Museum of Scotland: after she was put down, her creators donated her preserved body, and she has been on display there since 2003.
Q 15What did scientists find when they examined 13 elderly cloned sheep, including four from Dolly's cell line?
No obvious ill effects
No obvious ill effects: despite fears raised by Dolly's early death, the aged clones had normal blood sugar and blood pressure.
Q 16Why are clones like Dolly not perfect genetic copies of the nucleus donor?
The egg keeps its own mitochondrial DNA
The egg keeps its own mitochondrial DNA: scientists expected a mix from both cells, but Dolly's came entirely from the egg.
Q 17In The 6th Day, which action star plays a man who comes home to find a clone has replaced him?
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger: his character is cloned by accident in a future where cloned pets are sold but human cloning is illegal.
Q 18The word clone derives from the Ancient Greek word for what?
Twig
Twig: the word first named groups of plants grown from cuttings of one original, long before it was applied to copying animals.
Q 19What is parthenogenesis?
Reproduction by a female without a mate
Reproduction by a female without a mate: in many bees, wasps and ants, eggs that develop without fertilisation become males.
Q 20Which large lizard is among the animals known to reproduce by parthenogenesis?
Komodo dragon
Komodo dragon: young from these births are always male, which could reduce genetic diversity in zoo breeding.
Q 24Whose frog-egg experiments earned a share of the 2012 Nobel Prize with Shinya Yamanaka?
John Gurdon
John Gurdon: he showed a mature cell's nucleus still holds everything needed to make a tadpole, overturning the belief that specialisation is permanent.
Q 25In which country was the first fish cloned?
China
China: Tong Dizhou's team wanted to learn whether a cell's nucleus or its cytoplasm controls an animal's traits.
Q 26In Multiplicity, which actor plays a busy builder who has himself cloned to find more time for his family?
Michael Keaton
Michael Keaton: he plays Doug and every copy of him, and each clone develops a different personality.
Q 27What was the name of the first cloned cat, born in December 2001?
CC
CC: short for Copy Cat, though her coat pattern was not a carbon copy of her donor's.
Q 28Why did the first cloned cat's coat look different from her calico genetic donor's?
X-inactivation and epigenetic reprogramming
X-inactivation and epigenetic reprogramming: which X chromosome is switched off in each cell seems random, and that decides where a calico's colours fall.
Q 29Snuppy, the first cloned dog, was which breed?
Afghan Hound
Afghan Hound: he was cloned from another Afghan's skin cells, and later DNA tests confirmed he matched that donor, not his surrogate.
Q 30Why did dog cloning lag behind sheep?
Eggs mature poorly in labs
Eggs mature poorly in labs: Snuppy's team got around it by collecting eggs that had already matured inside dogs.