Galápagos Islands Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
54 free Galápagos Islands trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
The Galápagos Islands sit on the equator about 900 km off Ecuador, and almost nothing about them is ordinary. Penguins live north of the equator, cormorants forgot how to fly, iguanas graze on seaweed and sneeze out the salt, and a finch on two remote islets drinks the blood of boobies. This quiz covers the geography and geology (the hotspot, the Nazca plate, Volcán Wolf, Sierra Negra's caldera, the youngest and largest islands), the wildlife that made the archipelago famous, and the human story from Bishop Berlanga's accidental discovery in 1535 to Lonesome George's death in 2012. You will meet Darwin and the Beagle, the whalers' barrel post office on Floreana, the marooned Irishman who was the islands' first resident, the Essex crewman who set an island on fire, the US airbase built to guard the Panama Canal, and the tortoise called Diego who fathered around 900 offspring. Questions run from easy (which country owns the islands) to expert (who looked after Lonesome George). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the islands and their species, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Charles Darwin, Ecuador and volcanoes quizzes next.
30 of 54 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Russell Crowe film does the ship's doctor collect wildlife on the Galápagos?
Master and Commander
Master and Commander: a camouflaged stick insect the doctor finds there inspires Captain Aubrey to disguise his warship as a harmless whaler.
Q 02Which explorer backed claims that pre-Columbian South Americans sailed to the Galápagos?
Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl dug up pottery there, but later dating found no sign that anyone reached the islands before the Spanish did.
Q 03Pinzón Island's tortoises hatched in the wild for the first time in over a century after rangers wiped out what?
Black rats
Black rats: brought by ships, they ate the eggs and hatchlings for generations, until poison bait dropped from helicopters cleared the island.
Q 04Who accidentally discovered the Galápagos Islands in 1535?
Bishop Tomás de Berlanga
Bishop Tomás de Berlanga was sailing to Peru to settle a quarrel between Pizarro and Almagro when a calm and currents carried his ship off course.
Q 05Charles Darwin visited the islands aboard which ship?
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle was charting coasts for the Royal Navy, so while officers surveyed the islands for five weeks, Darwin collected rocks, plants and animals.
Q 06Which American author called the Galápagos 'the Enchanted Isles' in a set of 1854 sketches?
Herman Melville
Herman Melville had seen the islands from a whaling ship, and one of his sketches drew on a real castaway who once lived there.
Q 07Which is by far the largest island in the Galápagos?
Isabela
Isabela formed when six shield volcanoes merged into one island, and it is now bigger than all the other islands combined.
Q 08Volcán Wolf, the highest peak in the islands, is named after Theodor Wolf, who was what?
A German geologist
A German geologist, Theodor Wolf explored the islands in 1875, and on his return Ecuador appointed him its official state geologist.
Q 09The Galápagos archipelago sits on which tectonic plate?
Nazca
Nazca: the plate drifts east over the hotspot, so the oldest islands lie in the east and the youngest are still forming in the west.
Q 10Which Galápagos island is the youngest and the furthest west?
Fernandina
Fernandina sits over the hotspot that built the islands, which is why its volcano, La Cumbre, has erupted several times since 2009.
Q 11Which town is the most populous in the Galápagos?
Puerto Ayora
Puerto Ayora took shape after US and European settlers moved there between the world wars, and it had about 12,700 people at the 2022 census.
Q 12Scientists in the submersible Alvin first discovered what on the seafloor near the Galápagos?
Hydrothermal vents
Hydrothermal vents: in 1977 a sudden bed of live white clams in deep-sea photos led the team straight to them.
Q 13Galápagos National Park was declared in 1959, the centenary of what?
Publication of On the Origin of Species
Q 21The seabird name 'booby' comes from a Spanish word meaning what?
Fool or clown
Fool or clown: the name probably comes from Spanish 'bobo', because these tame birds landed on ships, where sailors easily caught them.
Q 22The blue-footed booby's foot colour comes from pigments obtained from where?
From the fish they eat
From the fish they eat: carotenoid pigments in fresh fish tint the feet, so bright feet signal a well-fed bird, and females prefer them.
Q 23Flightless cormorants lost flight largely because the islands lacked what?
Land predators
Land predators: with nothing to flee and food a dive away, their wings shrank to about a third of the size a bird their weight needs to fly.
Publication of On the Origin of Species: yet the park had no staff until 1968, when Ecuador appointed its first two conservation officers.
Q 14Roughly what share of the Galápagos' land area is protected as national park?
97%
97%: when the park was created, only land already settled was left out, so every town and farm fits in the remaining 3%.
Q 15The Galápagos penguin is the only penguin found where?
North of the equator
North of the equator: a few colonies nest just across the line, where the cold, upwelling Cromwell Current keeps the water cool and full of fish.
Q 16Marine iguanas forage in the sea for what food?
Algae
Algae: being cold-blooded, marine iguanas bask on the black rocks to warm up before they can swim out to graze in the chilly sea.
Q 17How do marine iguanas get rid of the excess salt they swallow?
Sneezing it out through nasal glands
Sneezing it out through nasal glands: the salty spray often lands on their heads and dries into a white crust.
Q 18During El Niño famines, marine iguanas can shrink their body length by up to how much?
20%
20%: they grow back once food returns, and scientists think the bones themselves shorten, since soft tissue alone can't explain it.
Q 19Darwin recorded that someone had nicknamed the marine iguanas what?
Imps of darkness
Imps of darkness: the phrase wasn't new, since a book about a British warship's 1824-25 voyage to Hawaii had already used it.
Q 20Which novelist imagined humans stranded on the Galápagos evolving into small-brained creatures with flippers?
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut's 1985 novel Galápagos blames humanity's troubles on its oversized brains, so evolution shrinks them.
Q 24The waved albatross breeds almost exclusively on which island?
Española
Española: young albatrosses leave for several years at sea, then return to the island to court a mate with a bill-clacking dance.
Q 25Lonesome George was the last known tortoise from which island?
Pinta
Pinta: a snail scientist spotted George there in 1971, and his nickname is thought to come from a character played by US comedian George Gobel.
Q 26How did giant tortoises first reach the Galápagos?
By floating
By floating: tortoises are buoyant and can stretch their necks above water, so the first ones probably drifted over from South America on currents.
Q 27Besides meat, what did 19th-century settlers and whalers mainly take from Galápagos tortoises?
Oil
Oil: settlers sold it to passing whalers, and hunting for meat and oil wiped out or nearly wiped out several islands' tortoises.
Q 28Which US city's zoo kept the Galápagos tortoise who later fathered about 900 babies for a rescue program?
San Diego
San Diego: DNA tests revealed his rare species, and back in the Galápagos he fathered about 40% of the breeding program's young.
Q 29Divers visit the Galápagos to see huge schools of which shark?
Hammerhead shark
Hammerhead shark: schools of hundreds gather along reefs and drop-offs by day, then the sharks move offshore to hunt at night.
Q 30Galápagos tortoise Harriet died at which celebrity's zoo?
Steve Irwin
Steve Irwin: legend said Darwin himself collected her, but DNA tests traced her to an island Darwin never visited.