Indian Elephants
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40 free Indian Elephants trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Indian elephant is the mainland subspecies of the Asian elephant, and most of the wild ones live in India itself. It is smaller than its African relatives, and it has shared its life with people for thousands of years as a worker, a warrior's mount and a temple animal. This quiz turns the best fun facts about Indian elephants into questions: how big they grow, what calves do that seems odd to us, how herds are organised, and what the animals do for the forests they live in. There are questions on festivals and processions, gods and old stories, emperors and their war elephants, films, and the dangers wild herds face. It suits animal lovers, pupils working on a school report, travellers planning a trip to India, and quiz hosts after a wildlife round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01For several years an Indian elephant calf eats what from its mother to gain bacteria that help digest plants?
Her dung
Her dung carries nutrients and the gut bacteria a calf needs to break down plants, even though the youngster starts on solid food at about six months.
Q 02The Elephant Whisperers, a 2022 film about a couple raising orphaned Indian elephant calf Raghu, won which prize?
An Oscar
An Oscar for best documentary short went to the film in 2023, a first for India in that category; its crew spent almost five years living beside the keepers.
Q 03Which Indian leader sent an elephant named Indira to a Tokyo zoo in 1949 after Japanese children wrote asking for one?
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru named the elephant after his daughter, the future prime minister Indira Gandhi, and she lived at the zoo until 1983.
Q 04Which activity can take up as many as 19 hours of an Indian elephant's day?
Foraging
Foraging fills most of the day because an adult gets through up to 150 kg of leaves, grass, bark and fruit every 24 hours.
Q 05Which animal is Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god, often shown riding as his mount?
A mouse
A mouse is the unlikely mount of so heavy a god, and Hindus revere the Indian elephant itself as one of his forms.
Q 06At about 22 months, the Indian elephant has the longest what of any land animal?
Pregnancy
Pregnancy lasts close to two years, and the single calf that arrives can weigh well over 100 kg and stand soon after birth.
Q 07In a famous parable from ancient India, men with which condition quarrel over what an elephant is like?
Blindness
Blindness is the point of the story: one man feels the trunk and thinks of a snake, another feels the tail and thinks of a rope, and each is sure he is right.
Q 08Which country, whose flag once showed a white elephant on a red field, has the Indian elephant as its national animal?
Thailand
Thailand flew a white elephant on red from 1855, when King Mongkut decided a plain red flag was not distinct enough for dealings with other nations.
Q 09The Indian elephant survives in Nepal and Bhutan but is regionally extinct in which other country on India's border?
Pakistan
Pakistan has lost its wild elephants, while India alone has nearly three-quarters of all the Indian elephants left in the wild.
Q 10Which members of an Indian elephant herd are pushed to leave once they reach puberty, between the ages of 8 and 13?
Young males
Young males drift away to roam alone or in loose bands, while females stay with the family herd for life.
Q 11Some Asian forest trees depend on giant plant-eaters such as Indian elephants to carry what for them?
Seeds
Seeds travel a long way inside an elephant, and in Asian forests the largest ones depend on giant plant-eaters such as elephants and rhinos to move them.
Q 12About how much does an average bull Indian elephant, standing 2.75 metres at the shoulder, weigh?
4,000 kg
4,000 kg is typical for a bull, well above a cow's 2,700 kg, and the very largest bulls reach about 5,400 kg.
Q 13Which part of an Indian elephant, an animal with a convex or level back, is the highest point of its body?
The head
The head tops the whole animal, capped by two rounded bulges that sit above a concave forehead.
Q 21Which Indian emperor handed 500 war elephants to Alexander's successor Seleucus as part of a peace treaty?
Chandragupta Maurya
Chandragupta Maurya gained Seleucus's easternmost provinces in the deal, and his elephants went on to help Seleucus win the Battle of Ipsus.
Q 22Which Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605, kept thousands of elephants in his imperial stables?
Akbar
Akbar ruled an empire founded in 1526 by Babur, whose own ancestor Timur had fought and captured the war elephants of Delhi.
Q 23Which Indian city's Dasara festival ends with the Jumbo Savari, where an elephant carries a goddess on a golden howdah?
Mysore
Q 14Which French naturalist gave the Indian elephant the scientific name Elephas indicus in 1798?
Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier described an elephant from India 40 years after Linnaeus named the species from a Ceylon animal; only in 1940 was the Indian form ranked as a subspecies.
Q 15Which Indonesian island has its own critically endangered subspecies of Asian elephant, a cousin of the Indian elephant?
Sumatra
Sumatra has its own subspecies, uprated to critically endangered in 2011 after losing at least 80% of its numbers in three generations.
Q 16Queen Maya is said to have dreamed of a white elephant entering her side before giving birth to which religious teacher?
The Buddha
The Buddha was said to have taken the shape of a white elephant, a lotus held in its trunk, to be reborn among people one last time.
Q 17In the Hindu legend of Gajendra Moksha, which god comes down to free an elephant from the jaws of a crocodile?
Vishnu
Vishnu answers the prayer of the elephant king, who had been seized by the leg while picking lotus flowers at a lake.
Q 18Which Hindu goddess is often shown flanked by two elephants that shower her with water from their trunks?
Lakshmi
Lakshmi takes the name Gajalakshmi in this form, and her two elephants are often read as symbols of the rain clouds that make the land fertile.
Q 19In Hindu cosmology, what job do four mythical elephants standing at the compass points do from the netherworld?
Hold up the Earth
Hold up the Earth is the task the Ramayana gives to four named elephants, one for each direction, while eight others stand guard over the zones of the universe.
Q 20Colonists from which country named Elephanta Island, near Mumbai, after elephant statues they found at its cave temples?
Portugal
Portugal's colonists called the island Elefante; its rock-cut cave temples, mostly dedicated to Shiva, are now a World Heritage Site.
Mysore's lead elephant bears the goddess Chamundeshwari in a howdah of some 750 kg, and the animals rehearse the march for about a month beforehand.
Q 24At which Indian temple festival do two facing lines of 15 elephants compete in swapping brightly coloured parasols?
Thrissur Pooram
Thrissur Pooram calls the parasol contest Kudamattam, and its elephants wear nettipattam, golden ornaments that cover the forehead.
Q 25Which Rajasthan city's Elephant Festival once featured painted elephants in polo, races and a tug of war against people?
Jaipur
Jaipur's owners decked their elephants in saddle cloths, jewellery and anklets that tinkled, and the best-dressed animal was named the winner.
Q 26Which Indian state hosts the Sonepur fair, whose Haathi Bazaar once lined up decorated elephants for sale?
Bihar
Bihar stages the fair each year at the full moon of Kartik, but trading elephants there has been prohibited since 2004.
Q 27Hastividyarnava, an illustrated manual on elephant care made for the Ahom king Siva Singha, is from which Indian state?
Assam
Assam's best-known illustrated manuscript sorts elephants into types and explains which ones suit a king, how to train them and how to keep them healthy.
Q 28What was the name of the stockade trap once used in India to capture a whole herd of wild elephants?
Khedda
Khedda drives used riders on tame elephants to push a herd into the stockade; one princely state staged 36 of them before the method was outlawed as cruel.
Q 29What name, from a Persian word for aid, is given in India to trained elephants used to calm and herd wild ones?
Kumkis
Kumkis keep some of their wild, dominant character on purpose, so that they can control a wild elephant by force if they have to.
Q 30What is the hooked elephant goad called that counts among Hinduism's eight auspicious objects?
Ankusha
Ankusha goads first appeared in India around the 6th century BC, and two perfectly preserved ancient examples were dug up at Taxila.