King Penguin
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40 free King Penguin trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
King penguins are the showy ones: tall, sleek and brightly marked, they crowd the beaches of remote southern islands in colonies that can run to hundreds of thousands of birds. They are also full of surprises, from the way they raise a chick without ever building a nest to the long, strange childhood that follows. This quiz turns the best king penguin fun facts into questions. It covers courtship and breeding, the chicks and their nurseries, hunting trips and diet, predators, the islands where the birds live, their brush with whalers and sealers, and the individual penguins that became famous in zoos, aquariums and on screen. The questions start easy and get harder, so they suit curious kids, classrooms, trivia nights and anyone who has ever stopped to watch a penguin waddle. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nils Olav, a king penguin promoted to major general in 2023, is the mascot of which country's King's Guard?
Norway
Norway's King's Guard adopted its first Nils Olav in 1972, and the name has passed down through three penguins. Guinness World Records lists the holder as the highest-ranking penguin.
Q 02Lala, a pet king penguin filmed walking to a fish market wearing a backpack, lived in which country?
Japan
Japan was home to Lala, who had been caught by accident by a fisherman, nursed back to health and then adopted by the man's family as a pet.
Q 03Which 1992 Tim Burton film gave Danny DeVito's villain an army that included real king penguins?
Batman Returns
Batman Returns mixed live king and African penguins with puppets, performers in suits and computer effects to build the villain's waddling army.
Q 04Pesto, a king penguin chick who became an internet star in 2024 for his enormous size, hatched in which city?
Melbourne
Melbourne's Sea Life aquarium saw visits jump by 30% thanks to Pesto, who as a fluffy chick weighed more than his two foster parents put together.
Q 05The king penguin is the second-largest penguin species; which close relative is the only one that is bigger?
Emperor
Emperor penguin is the answer. European explorers who first met kings took them for the largest penguin alive, and the two species were only told apart in 1844.
Q 06King penguins build no nest; where does a parent keep the single egg during nearly two months of incubation?
On its feet
On its feet, tucked under a warm fold of belly skin, is where the egg rides. The newly hatched chick stays there too for its first few weeks.
Q 07Which desert city keeps king penguins inside an indoor ski resort attached to one of its shopping malls?
Dubai
Dubai's indoor ski slope, kept at around freezing inside the Mall of the Emirates, is among the odder homes for king penguins. Most captive birds live in zoos and aquariums.
Q 08A male king penguin courts a mate by stretching to full height and giving a call named after which instrument?
Trumpet
Trumpet is the instrument: a male's trumpeting call advertises him to females, and an interested one joins him in bowing, strutting and stretching.
Q 09Which British zoo, famed for its penguin parade, hatched the first captive-bred penguin, a king, in 1919?
Edinburgh Zoo
Edinburgh Zoo hatched the chick a few years after three king penguins arrived on a whaling expedition's ship. Its famous parade began by accident, when several birds escaped their enclosure.
Q 10Which small glowing fish of the deep ocean do king penguins eat more than any other prey?
Lanternfish
Lanternfish are the staple. They rise towards the surface after dark and sink again by daybreak, and king penguins dive far shallower at night than by day.
Q 11What name is given to the nursery group where king penguin chicks wait while the adults fish at sea?
Crèche
Crèche is the term, the same one used for a daycare for human toddlers. A handful of grown birds watch over the chicks while the rest are away feeding.
Q 12Which honour, approved by his regiment's king, did the mascot king penguin Nils Olav receive at a 2008 parade?
A knighthood
A knighthood made him Sir Nils, the first penguin so honoured in his adopted army. Some 130 guardsmen paraded at his zoo as the royal citation was read out.
Q 13Which species of seal, a solitary hunter of the Southern Ocean, takes adult king penguins and fledglings at sea?
Leopard
Q 21With well over a million breeding pairs, the king penguin sits in which category of the IUCN Red List?
Least Concern
Least Concern is the listing, a turnaround for a bird once slaughtered for its oil. The modern worry is warming seas pushing its feeding grounds farther from its colonies.
Q 22Macquarie Island, where king penguins breed in their tens of thousands, is governed as part of which Australian state?
Tasmania
Tasmania has governed Macquarie Island since 1880, and in the early 1900s leased it to a businessman whose oil industry was built on harvesting penguins.
Q 23St Andrews Bay, home to over 150,000 king penguin pairs, lies on which island Ernest Shackleton crossed on foot?
South Georgia
Leopard seals take adults and newly fledged birds in the water. On land the danger comes from above, as seabirds snatch eggs and chicks.
Q 14What colour are the bold ear patches on an adult king penguin, which narrow to a strip toward the chest?
Orange
Orange patches curve from the ears down to the upper chest of every adult. Chicks have none: they wear thick brown down until their first moult.
Q 15How does a king penguin parent returning from a fishing trip deliver the catch to its waiting chick?
Regurgitates it
Regurgitates it is the unglamorous answer: the adult eats fish at sea, digests it slightly and brings it back up into the chick's mouth.
Q 16Experiments with feathers and droppings showed king penguins can pick up colony cues using which sense?
Smell
Smell works for king penguins: they reacted to airborne odours from the feathers and droppings of their own kind, though what they use the skill for is still unclear.
Q 17Unlike some penguins, whose males incubate alone, who keeps a king penguin's egg warm for nearly two months?
Both parents
Both parents take turns, in shifts of 6 to 18 days, while the other feeds at sea. The male takes the first shift.
Q 18A king penguin's single egg starts white and turns pale green; which fruit is its shape compared to?
Pear
Pear is the shape, known to scientists as pyriform. The shell is soft when laid, then hardens and darkens to its greenish colour.
Q 19To breathe without slowing down, king penguins use a leaping swimming style named after which marine mammal?
Porpoise
Porpoise gives its name to porpoising, which lets a penguin snatch a breath without breaking its pace. A king usually cruises at 6.5 to 10 kilometres an hour.
Q 20What winter-sport name describes a king penguin sliding along on its belly, pushed by feet and flippers?
Tobogganing
Tobogganing is the word for the belly slide, driven by the feet and wing-like flippers. The rest of the time a king penguin gets about with a wobbling walk.
South Georgia holds the vast colony, on an island whose king penguins were nearly wiped out by hunters after their oil. Numbers recovered once the killing stopped.
Q 24The Crozet and Kerguelen islands, home to the biggest king penguin populations, belong to which European country?
France
France administers both groups as part of its Southern and Antarctic Lands, and every king penguin colony there lies inside a national nature reserve.
Q 25Which country's King Penguin Park sits on Tierra del Fuego beside a stretch of water called Useless Bay?
Chile
Chile hosts the park on Inútil Bay, which a British captain named in 1827 because it offered neither anchorage nor shelter. King penguins are regularly seen on its eastern shore.
Q 26What happened between the 1980s and 2017 to the world's largest king penguin colony, on Île aux Cochons?
It shrank by almost 90%
It shrank by almost 90%, from about half a million breeding pairs to around 60,000, and nobody has pinned down why. Climate, disease and food shortage are all suspects.
Q 27King penguins stay faithful to one mate for a whole season; what do most of them do the following year?
Find a new partner
Find a new partner is the usual pattern: fewer than 30% of couples get back together. The unusually long breeding cycle probably has a lot to do with it.
Q 28King penguin chicks are almost fully grown by April; what happens to them over the winter months that follow?
They fast and slim down
They fast and slim down, sometimes going months between meals while the adults feed far out at sea. They fatten up again in spring and fledge by early summer.
Q 29King penguin colonies look evenly spaced because each breeding bird keeps its neighbours how far away?
Pecking distance
Pecking distance is the rule: with no nest to defend, each bird guards the small patch it can reach with its bill, and positions stay stable for weeks.
Q 30A king penguin chick picking out a parent's call in a noisy colony shows an effect named after which gathering?
Cocktail party
Cocktail party is the borrowed name. With no nest to act as a meeting point, a chick learns the calls that matter in its first five weeks and listens for the lower of two tones.