Dolphins Trivia for Kids
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50 free Dolphins Trivia for Kids trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This dolphins for kids trivia quiz covers what makes dolphins so cool: they are mammals, not fish, they breathe through a blowhole, they find fish with clicks and echoes, they sleep with half their brain at a time, and each one has its own whistle that works like a name. It meets the bottlenose dolphin, the orca, the spinner dolphin, the common dolphin, the pink Amazon river dolphin and the tiny vaquita, and it stops by Flipper and the real dolphin Winter, who swam with a prosthetic tail. It is written for kids roughly 6 to 12, for aquarium trips, ocean units at school and family quiz night. Most questions are easy or medium and a few near the end will stretch older kids. Grown-ups who want a tougher run can try our hard nature or hard sharks trivia, and our main dolphins trivia page has the full mix. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia article on the species or topic, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What kind of animal is a dolphin?
Mammals
Mammals are warm-blooded and feed their babies milk, so a dolphin calf stays beside its mother and nurses for well over a year, while most fish just lay eggs.
Q 02In Laguna, Brazil, wild dolphins help people do what?
Catch fish
Catch fish: the dolphins herd schools of mullet toward fishermen waiting along the shore and signal when to throw the nets.
Q 03What is the hole on top of a dolphin's head for?
Breathing
Breathing is what the blowhole is for: it is really a nostril that moved to the top of the head over millions of years, so a dolphin barely has to break the surface.
Q 04Which canned fish often carries a 'dolphin-safe' label?
Tuna
Tuna often gather beneath dolphins in the eastern Pacific, so fishing boats used to circle the dolphins with huge nets to reach the fish below; the label promises that no dolphins were netted.
Q 05What is a dolphin's tail called?
A fluke
A fluke beats up and down to push a dolphin along, while a fish's upright tail swings from side to side, which is an easy way to tell the two apart.
Q 06What is the thick layer of fat that keeps a dolphin warm called?
Blubber
Blubber covers the body but not the fins and tail, so a dolphin that gets too warm sends extra blood out to them to cool down.
Q 07How do bottlenose dolphins usually eat the fish they catch?
Swallow them whole
Swallow them whole: a dolphin's teeth are for gripping rather than chewing, and a fish that is too big gets broken into smaller pieces first.
Q 08What sounds do dolphins make to talk and to find things?
Clicks and whistles
Clicks and whistles do different jobs: whistles are for talking to each other, while clicks bounce off fish and rocks so the dolphin can find them by the echo.
Q 09What is the fatty lump on a dolphin's forehead called, which helps focus its sound?
The melon
The melon works like a lens for sound, squeezing the dolphin's clicks into a narrow beam that points straight ahead.
Q 10Which two animal groups are the best-known users of echolocation?
Toothed whales and bats
Toothed whales and bats are not close relatives and came up with echolocation separately, yet scientists have found matching changes in several of their hearing genes.
Q 11How do dolphins sleep without drowning?
One half of the brain sleeps at a time
One half of the brain sleeps at a time while the other half stays awake, keeps one eye open for danger and reminds the dolphin to come up for air.
Q 12Dolphins' hearing is so good that some can survive even if they are what?
Blind
Their ears work in both air and water, and echolocation lets them see with sound.
Q 13What have dolphins been seen doing for a badly hurt friend?
Push it up to the surface
Push it up to the surface: helpers have been seen holding a sick or injured dolphin at the top so it can reach the air, because a dolphin that cannot get there will drown.
Q 21How does a newborn dolphin keep up with its fast-swimming mother?
It rides in her slipstream
It rides in her slipstream: by swimming close beside her the calf is pulled along by the water her body drags with it, so it keeps pace without tiring out.
Q 22Why did old-time sailors give orcas their scary nickname?
They saw them hunt bigger whales
They saw them hunt bigger whales: a group of orcas works as a team, like a pack of wolves, and together they can kill a whale far larger than any one of them.
Q 23A male orca's dorsal fin can stand about as tall as what?
A grown-up person
Q 14Why do dolphins travelling at top speed keep leaping clear of the water?
To save energy
To save energy: air drags on the body far less than water, so at high speed a string of low leaps costs a dolphin less effort than ploughing along at the surface.
Q 15What shape are a dolphin's teeth, perfect for gripping slippery fish?
Cone-shaped
Cone-shaped teeth are pointed for holding on, not flat for chewing, so a dolphin uses them to grab a wriggling fish and never to grind it up.
Q 16In which state was Flipper, the 1960s TV show about a clever pet dolphin, set?
Florida
Florida was home to Flipper and the park ranger's family, and although the character was a boy dolphin, the part was played by female dolphins.
Q 17Each bottlenose dolphin has its own special whistle that works a bit like what?
A name
A name is how it works: each dolphin makes up its own whistle while it is young, and others copy that whistle to call or get the attention of that one dolphin.
Q 18Why do some wild bottlenose dolphins wear sea sponges on their faces?
To protect their snouts while digging
To protect their snouts while digging: in Shark Bay, Australia, a few dolphins carry a sponge on the beak, apparently as a shield against sharp rocks, as they poke about the seabed for hidden fish.
Q 19Scientists can tell a dolphin's age by counting yearly layers inside what?
Teeth
Teeth: a dolphin keeps one set for life and adds a new layer inside each one every year, so a thin slice can be read like tree rings, and some bottlenose dolphins have passed 60.
Q 20Militaries have trained bottlenose dolphins to do what job?
Find sea mines
Find sea mines: a trained dolphin searches with its echolocation, and when it finds a mine it drops a marker buoy nearby so that ships can steer clear.
A grown-up person: a big male's fin stands up to about two metres high, around twice the height of a female's, so the tall fins make the males in a group easy to spot.
Q 24Which sense do scientists think a bottlenose dolphin lacks altogether?
Smell
Smell: the nerves and brain parts that handle it are missing, so scientists think a dolphin cannot sniff at all, while its eyes work well both under the water and above it.
Q 25Which so-called whales are really dolphins, second in size only to the orca?
Pilot whales
Pilot whales are really big dolphins, and their name is said to come from an old belief that a single leader steered each group, the way a pilot guides a ship.
Q 26When do spinner dolphins, famous for twirling as they leap, do most of their hunting?
At night
At night: the small fish and squid they eat hide in deep water by day and rise towards the surface after dark, so spinners feed through the night and rest in calm bays by day.
Q 27Which is the most abundant cetacean in the world, with about six million alive?
The common dolphin
They gather in pods of hundreds or even thousands and have an hourglass pattern on their sides.
Q 28What colour do grown-up river dolphins in the Amazon turn?
Pink
Pink comes with age: a boto is born grey, and the males end up pinkest, probably because they fight the most and their skin heals pink where it has been scraped.
Q 29What can Amazon river dolphins do that most other dolphins cannot?
Turn their heads to steer
Turn their heads to steer is the trick: most dolphins have stiff, fused necks, but a boto can bend its neck to weave between the tree trunks when the river floods the forest.
Q 30Hector's dolphin lives only around which country?
New Zealand
New Zealand is the only place it lives, and because this small dolphin keeps to shallow water close to shore, getting tangled in fishing nets is the main reason its numbers have fallen.