Dolphins
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
92 free Dolphins trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
15 free Dolphins trivia questions with answers. Dolphins trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Dolphin trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
30 of 92 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What makes up the bulk of most dolphins' diet?
Fish and squid
Fish and squid make up most dolphins' diet; a group will herd a school into a tight 'bait ball' and take turns charging through it.
Q 02Which of these senses are dolphins thought to lack altogether?
Smell
Smell is the missing sense: dolphins have neither olfactory nerves nor the brain lobes that process scent, so they are thought unable to smell at all.
Q 03Which dolphin, the only cetacean endemic to New Zealand, is also among the smallest?
Hector's
Hector's dolphin lives only in New Zealand's coastal waters, and keeping so close to shore puts it in the path of fishing nets: entanglement in gillnets is the greatest threat to it.
Q 04What is the thick layer of insulating fat under a dolphin's skin called?
Blubber
Blubber does more than keep a dolphin warm: it stores energy for lean times and smooths the body's outline, which makes swimming more efficient.
Q 05What is a typical group of dolphins called?
Pod
A pod can merge with others where food is plentiful: common dolphins sometimes gather in 'mega-pods' of thousands of animals.
Q 06What is the dolphin's sonar-like way of finding prey in murky water called?
Echolocation
Echolocation means sending out sound pulses and reading the echoes, which a dolphin is thought to pick up through its jaw: fat in the lower jaw carries the sound to the ears.
Q 07Which fatty organ in a dolphin's forehead focuses its sound pulses into a beam?
Melon
The melon is built of fats of differing density, so it bends sound much as a glass lens bends light and focuses the pulses made in the nasal passages into a forward beam.
Q 08What sounds do dolphins fire off in rapid 'trains' to scan murky water for prey?
Clicks
Clicks are made in the nasal passages, not with vocal cords: air pushed past the 'phonic lips' makes the tissue vibrate, and a rapid series is called a click train.
Q 09A dolphin's conical teeth are built for what job?
Seizing fast-moving prey
Seizing fast-moving prey is all the teeth do: a dolphin grips a fish and swallows it whole, head first, so the spines don't catch in its throat.
Q 10How often can a bottlenose dolphin's outermost skin layer be replaced?
Every 2 hours
A bottlenose dolphin's outermost skin layer can be replaced every 2 hours, about nine times faster than human skin; the constant sloughing is thought to keep the surface smooth and cut drag.
Q 11Female orcas are among the few animals, besides humans, known to live for decades after what?
Menopause
Menopause comes at about 40 for female orcas, which can then live for decades; the long afterlife pays off, since a post-breeding mother raises her grown sons' odds of survival.
Q 12What is a dolphin's dorsal fin made of?
Fibrous connective tissue
Fibrous connective tissue, with no bone or cartilage, makes up the dorsal fin and the tail flukes alike; only the flippers hold bones, the same set found in a human arm.
Q 13How do dolphins manage to sleep without drowning?
They rest one brain half at a time
Q 21Orcas are sometimes called the 'wolves of the sea' because of how they do what?
Hunt in packs
Hunt in packs is the reason: orcas work together to corner prey, at times taking whales larger than themselves, and nothing in the sea preys on them.
Q 22In Peru, dolphin meat is sold under the name chancho marino, meaning what?
Sea pork
Chancho marino, 'sea pork', is the euphemism under which dolphin meat is sold in Peru, even though the animals are protected by law there.
Q 23Bottlenose dolphins are known to have 'signature' versions of what, unique to each individual?
Whistles
Signature whistles work like names: each bottlenose dolphin develops its own, and wild dolphins call back when they hear a copy of theirs but ignore copies of others'.
They rest one brain half at a time: the half that stays awake keeps a dolphin rising to breathe and watching for predators while the other sleeps.
Q 14Shark Bay bottlenose dolphins in Australia teach their young to wear what while foraging?
Sponges
Shark Bay dolphins wear marine sponges on their beaks to protect them while rooting for fish on the seabed; the habit is learned, passed mostly from mother to daughter, a clear case of animal culture.
Q 15The boto, a river dolphin that hunts among the trees of flooded rainforest, lives in which region?
South America
South America's boto swims into flooded forest in the wet season; unlike sea dolphins it has unfused neck bones, so it can turn its head 90 degrees to steer between the trunks.
Q 16The word 'dolphin' comes from the Greek delphís, related to a Greek word meaning what?
Womb
Womb is delphys in Greek; the name is often read as 'a fish with a womb', though it may instead describe the animal's shape.
Q 17Dolphins belong to which branch of the whales?
Toothed whales
Toothed whales take in every dolphin, along with the sperm whale; their cousins the baleen whales gave up teeth for comb-like plates that strain food from the water.
Q 18What are the closest living relatives of dolphins and other cetaceans?
Hippopotamuses
Hippopotamuses were long grouped with pigs on the evidence of their teeth, until blood-protein and DNA studies showed their nearest living kin are the whales and dolphins.
Q 19The orca and other dolphins that are commonly called whales share which collective name?
Blackfish
Blackfish is an old name for these dark-skinned dolphins, and the 2013 documentary Blackfish borrowed it for the story of Tilikum, a captive orca.
Q 20Unlike most other mammals, dolphin calves are usually born in what way?
Tail first
Tail first is the usual delivery, though head-first births are also seen; among bottlenose dolphins another adult, nicknamed an auntie, sometimes stays close to the mother and her newborn.
Q 24Male river dolphins in Brazil have been observed using weeds and sticks for what purpose?
Sexual display
Adult males carry sticks, branches and lumps of clay in their jaws as a sexual display aimed at females; researchers found the showing-off went hand in hand with fights between the males.
Q 25The baiji, a river dolphin declared functionally extinct in 2006, lived in which river?
The Yangtze
The Yangtze was the baiji's only home; a six-week search in 2006 found none, and its loss is blamed chiefly on fishing gear and heavy shipping.
Q 26The Amazon river dolphin is famous for turning what colour as an adult, especially in males?
Pink
Pink is the adult colour, and males are pinkest; it has been put down to skin abraded in fights, though water temperature and clarity may also play a part.
Q 27Which fish, common on restaurant menus, is also called the dolphinfish despite being no relation?
Mahi-mahi
Mahi-mahi, a Hawaiian name borrowed into English in the 1940s, is what the fish is called on a plate; its older English name was simply 'dolphin', hence the confusion.
Q 28Pelorus Jack, a dolphin protected by New Zealand law in 1904, was famous for doing what?
Escorting ships
Escorting ships through the Marlborough Sounds for 24 years made Pelorus Jack, a Risso's dolphin, a celebrity; the government stepped in after someone was reported to have shot at him from a passing ship.
Q 29Feeding wild dolphins is illegal in US waters, largely because of what effect on the animals?
Teaches them to beg
Teaches them to beg: fed dolphins lose their wariness of people and boats and start taking bait off fishing gear, so the Marine Mammal Protection Act's rules class feeding as an illegal 'take'.
Q 30Which orca ecotype of the northeast Pacific hunts seals and sea lions rather than fish?
Transient
Transient, or Bigg's, orcas hunt marine mammals in small groups and avoid the fish-eating orcas that share their waters; the two types are not known to interbreed.