Gorilla Trivia
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49 free Gorilla trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This gorilla trivia quiz covers the biology first: how big a silverback really gets, why gorillas have fingerprints, how the two species and their subspecies are split by the Congo River, what mountain gorillas eat, how the nine-step chest-beating display works, and why gorillas build a brand-new nest every single night. Then it moves to gorillas and people: Hanno the Navigator's hairy 'Gorillae', Paul Du Chaillu, Carl Akeley, George Schaller and Dian Fossey, Koko and her kitten, Colo the first captive-born gorilla, Snowflake the albino, Harambe, King Kong and Donkey Kong. Conservation questions cover Ebola, bushmeat and the remarkable recovery of the mountain gorilla to just over 1,000 animals. Every question was checked against a primary reference (mainly the Wikipedia articles on gorillas and the individual animals and researchers named) and carries a citation. It works as a classroom quiz, a pub round or a warm-up before our chimpanzee and orangutan quizzes.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the leader of a gorilla troop called?
A silverback
A silverback is named for the saddle of silver hair that comes with maturity, and he makes the troop's decisions: where it travels to feed, when it rests and where it spends the night.
Q 02What is the scientific name of the gorilla subspecies that nearly all zoo gorillas belong to?
Gorilla gorilla gorilla
Gorilla gorilla gorilla says one word three times because this was the kind first described, and the naming rules make that original population repeat its species name.
Q 03Which two animals are more closely related to humans than gorillas are?
Bonobos and chimpanzees
Bonobos and chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, yet when the gorilla genome was read in 2012, about 15% of human DNA turned out to be closer to the gorilla's than to the chimpanzee's.
Q 04Gorillas hold which distinction among the primates?
The largest alive today
The largest alive today, gorillas are nonetheless quiet, peaceful plant-eaters that live in close family groups, the opposite of the raging monsters the movies made of them.
Q 05What is the leading cause of death among adult gorillas living in zoos?
Heart disease
Heart disease is the biggest killer of adult gorillas in zoos, just as it is for people, even though zoo life lets them pass 50, against 35 to 40 years in the wild.
Q 06The word 'gorilla' comes from the voyage of Hanno the Navigator, an explorer sent out by which ancient city?
Carthage
Carthage sent Hanno down Africa's west coast around 500 BC, where his crew met hairy, wild people their interpreters called Gorillai; an American missionary borrowed the word for the ape in 1847.
Q 07In Disney's 1999 animated film Tarzan, what is the name of the gorilla who adopts and raises him?
Kala
Kala soothes the orphaned baby with a lullaby that became Phil Collins's 'You'll Be in My Heart', which went on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song.
Q 08A sailor's 1625 name for an African ape, 'Pongo', now belongs to which Asian primate?
Orangutan
Orangutans now carry the genus name Pongo because early naturalists used the word for any great ape, although the sailor, Andrew Battel, was probably describing a gorilla.
Q 09Field researchers tell individual wild gorillas apart by which uniquely patterned body part?
The nose
The nose of every gorilla is creased in its own pattern, called a nose print, and field researchers have kept files of nose sketches to tell their study animals apart.
Q 10The real gorilla behind the book and film The One and Only Ivan spent 27 years on display where?
A shopping mall
A shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington, kept Ivan in a concrete indoor enclosure until a public campaign freed him in 1994; at Zoo Atlanta he went outdoors for the first time in nearly three decades.
Q 11The 2012 gorilla genome showed that humans and gorillas had both rapidly evolved genes for which sense?
Hearing
Hearing genes turned out to have changed as fast in gorillas as in humans, which undercut the older idea that our own sharp hearing evolved to serve spoken language.
Q 12Which geographical feature separates the ranges of the two gorilla species?
The Congo River
The Congo River and its tributaries lie between them. During the Ice Age the rainforest probably shrank into pockets, and gorillas cut off in the west and east drifted apart into two species.
Q 13How did scientists in a 2009 study get young gorillas and other apes to laugh?
Tickled them
Q 21In a famous 1999 attention experiment, many viewers missed a person in a gorilla suit because they were counting what?
Basketball passes
Basketball passes kept viewers so busy that only half noticed the gorilla, even though it stopped among the players and thumped its chest; most people are sure they would have seen it.
Q 22Which animal is the only likely natural predator of adult gorillas?
The leopard
The leopard is the only wild predator known to kill adult gorillas, and the evidence is thin: a few kills have been confirmed, while gorilla remains found in leopard droppings may only show scavenging.
Q 23Which other apes have been observed forming coalitions to attack gorilla families and kill infants?
Chimpanzees
Tickled them: the giggles of the young apes and of tickled human babies differed in step with the family tree, so laughter was traced back to the common ancestor of great apes and humans.
Q 14Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to nearly half the world's mountain gorillas, lies in which country?
Uganda
Uganda opened Bwindi to gorilla tracking in 1993, and visitors now hike its steep, tangled slopes for a short visit with a family that has slowly been accustomed to people.
Q 15A gorilla's big toe differs from a human's in which way?
It grips like a thumb
It grips like a thumb, so a foot can hold food or a branch, while a gorilla's hands match ours down to fingerprints as individual as a person's.
Q 16Gorillas usually walk on all fours with their weight resting on which part of the hand?
The knuckles
The knuckles take the weight because the fingers are curled under, yet high-speed film from 2018 caught about four in ten mountain gorillas also walking on other parts of the hand.
Q 17What makes up the bulk of a mountain gorilla's diet?
Leaves, stems, pith and shoots
Leaves, stems, pith and shoots are nearly all a mountain gorilla eats, and it favours thistles and wild celery, while fruit barely features.
Q 18Which gorilla subspecies depends most on fruit?
Western lowland
Western lowland gorillas climb for the fruit of many kinds of tree while it is in season, then fall back on leaves, bark and seeds in the dry months when little is ripe.
Q 19Why do gorillas rarely drink water?
Their food is moist enough
Their food is moist enough, because the juicy plants they eat all day are full of water and often wet with morning dew; gorillas will still take a drink now and then.
Q 20How often do gorillas build a new sleeping nest?
Every day
Every day ends in a fresh nest, even if last night's is only metres away, and because the old ones are left behind, researchers count nests to estimate how many shy gorillas a forest holds.
Chimpanzees were seen doing this in Gabon's Loango National Park in 2019, after years in which researchers there had watched the two apes meet peacefully and even feed in the same fruit trees.
Q 24Younger subordinate males aged 8 to 12 in a gorilla troop are known as what?
Blackbacks
Blackbacks have yet to grow the grey saddle and the huge canine teeth of a full adult, changes that take several years of puberty, and until then they may serve as backup protection for the group.
Q 25After its first few months, how does a young gorilla usually travel through the forest?
Riding on its mother's back
Riding on its mother's back begins once an infant is strong enough to hold on, after months carried against her chest, and it keeps hitching lifts long after it has learned to walk.
Q 26Which sound, the most common within a gorilla group, signals contentment?
A rumbling belch
A rumbling belch, drawn out like a throat being cleared, keeps the group in touch, because gorillas feeding in dense forest often cannot see one another and rely on calls instead.
Q 27How does a gorilla's charge usually end?
He stops short
He stops short because the charge is a bluff, the finale of a ritual that builds through hooting, chest-beating and torn-up plants, and it lets rivals settle things without injury.
Q 28What can a rival gorilla judge from the pitch of a male's chest beat?
His size
His size shows in the sound, because bigger males make deeper beats on their chests, so a rival or a watching female can weigh him up by ear alone.
Q 29Scientists first recorded a wild gorilla using a tool when a female in Congo picked up a branch to do what?
Test the water's depth
To test the water's depth, she prodded the pool ahead of her with a branch, then leaned on it like a walking stick as she waded in; it made gorillas the last great ape seen using tools in the wild.
Q 30Which broadcaster planned a piece to camera about thumbs but ended up with a young gorilla lying on him?
David Attenborough
David Attenborough came face to face with a female, dropped his script and spoke instead about how alike gorillas and people are; at one point a three-year-old called Pablo lay down on top of him.