Kiwi (Bird)
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50 free Kiwi (Bird) trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The kiwi is one of the oddest birds alive. It never leaves the ground, comes out mostly after dark, and is built in several ways more like a small mammal than a bird. Almost everything about it, from its skeleton to its senses to the way it breeds, comes with a surprise. This quiz turns the best fun facts about the kiwi bird into questions: how it finds food, why its eggs are so famous, what hunts it and how people are bringing it back, where its relatives lived, and how a shy forest bird became the emblem of a whole country, turning up on badges, money and sports shirts. It suits curious nature lovers, students and teachers, and anyone planning a trip to New Zealand. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing far more about kiwi than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Kiwi are the only birds in the world with which feature at the very tip of their long beaks?
Nostrils
Nostrils at the beak tip let a kiwi sniff out prey hidden under the soil, and the bird snorts loudly to blow the dirt back out.
Q 02Kiwi are about the size of which farmyard bird, yet lay eggs roughly six times bigger?
Chicken
Chicken-sized though she is, a female kiwi carries an egg that can reach a fifth of her own body weight.
Q 03Most birds have hollow bones, but kiwi bones are filled with what, just as in mammals?
Marrow
Marrow fills a kiwi's bones because a bird that never takes off has no need for a light, air-filled skeleton.
Q 04During which conflict did the nickname Kiwis for New Zealand's soldiers come into general use?
World War I
World War I spread the name, and by 1917 New Zealanders in general were being called Kiwis in place of older labels such as Enzedder.
Q 05Which branch of New Zealand's military has a red kiwi, a flightless bird, in its roundel?
The air force
The air force officially adopted the kiwi in 1970, after complaints that the silver fern in its roundel was hard to spot and could be mistaken for a white feather.
Q 06Kiwi feathers lack the tiny hooks that lock most plumage together, so they look and feel like what?
Hair
Hair is the usual comparison, because the loose, shaggy plumage is warm and fluffy but could never hold a bird in the air.
Q 07Relative to body mass, the kiwi has the smallest of which organ among all the world's birds?
Eyes
Eyes matter so little to a kiwi that completely blind birds have been found living in the wild in good physical condition.
Q 08Kiwi shoe polish, named after the flightless bird, was actually first made in which country?
Australia
Australia was home to founder William Ramsay, who named his Melbourne-made polish in honour of his wife's homeland.
Q 09What must a female kiwi do in the final days before laying, when her huge egg leaves no room?
Stop eating
Stop eating is all she can do, since the egg crowds out her stomach; for the month before that, she eats three times her usual amount.
Q 10Before humans, which were New Zealand's only native land mammals, leaving the forest floor to kiwi?
Bats
Bats, just three species of them, left the jobs done elsewhere by horses and wolves open to birds, reptiles and insects.
Q 11Which animal is the biggest killer of adult kiwi, drawn by a scent it finds irresistible?
Dogs
Dogs of any size, breed or training can kill a kiwi with nothing more than a playful push, because the bird's chest is so easily crushed.
Q 12Which predator, imported to control rabbits, kills about half of all kiwi chicks in many areas?
Stoats
Stoats stay a danger until a chick weighs about a kilogram, the point at which a young kiwi can usually fight one off.
Q 13Which favourite kiwi food, pulled from the soil, can grow to over half a metre long in New Zealand?
Earthworms
Earthworms break easily, so a kiwi pulls gently and then waits, motionless, for its catch to relax its grip on the tunnel.
Q 21Kiwi are the smallest members of which group of flightless birds, alongside rheas and cassowaries?
Ratites
Ratites take their name from the Latin for raft, a boat with no keel, because their flat breastbones lack the ridge that anchors flight muscles.
Q 22DNA and fossil evidence suggest the small ancestors of the kiwi most likely reached New Zealand how?
By flying
By flying is the leading theory: a fossil relative from Otago was smaller than any living kiwi and seems to have been built for the air.
Q 23Which bird lays the world's largest egg, yet the smallest for its body size, the reverse of a kiwi?
Ostrich
Ostrich eggs weigh only about 2% of the mother, a tenth of the share that a kiwi egg takes up inside its mother.
Q 14DNA studies found which extinct giant of Madagascar to be the closest relative of the kiwi?
Elephant bird
Elephant bird DNA upended the old assumption that kiwi were closest to the moa that lived alongside them.
Q 15Which body part, found on almost every other bird, is completely missing from a kiwi?
A tail
A tail is missing in every kiwi species, and only a small bony stub called a pygostyle is left where one would be.
Q 16In which country did New Zealand soldiers carve a giant kiwi into a chalk hillside in 1919?
England
England still has the Bulford Kiwi on Salisbury Plain, cut after riots to keep restless troops busy; its beak alone is 150 feet long.
Q 17After leaving the twenty-cent piece in 1990, the kiwi moved to the back of which New Zealand coin?
One dollar
One dollar coins have carried the bird since 1991, and currency traders have nicknamed the country's money itself the kiwi.
Q 18Which of New Zealand's national sports teams is known as the Kiwis, after the bird?
Rugby league
Rugby league took the name; the union side are the All Blacks, the hockey players the Black Sticks and the basketballers the Tall Blacks.
Q 19The kiwi's scientific genus name, Apteryx, comes from Ancient Greek words with which meaning?
Wingless
Wingless is nearly true: the leftover limbs are so small that they vanish completely beneath the bird's shaggy plumage.
Q 20The Māori name kiwi is generally thought to be an imitation of which night-time forest sound?
The bird's call
The bird's call gave it the name: the shrill whistle of a male southern brown kiwi is usually written down as kee-wee.
Q 24Kiwi parents rarely feed their chicks, so what nourishes a newly hatched kiwi for its first days?
Its yolk sac
Its yolk sac does the job, because a kiwi egg is about 65% yolk, close to double the share found in most other birds' eggs.
Q 25In brown kiwi, who alone keeps the egg warm for well over two months?
The father
The father takes over as soon as the egg is laid, and by the time it hatches he has lost a great deal of his body weight.
Q 26To soothe skin stretched tight by her enormous egg, a female kiwi may soak her belly in what?
Cold water
Cold water eases both the inflamed skin and the load; her belly bulges so far that it can touch the ground as she walks.
Q 27A single kiwi may keep up to fifty of which daytime shelters dotted across its territory?
Burrows
Burrows give a kiwi a choice of beds, and great spotted kiwi go further by digging mazes of tunnels with more than one exit.
Q 28What grows around the base of a kiwi's beak and helps the bird feel its way through the dark?
Whiskers
Whiskers like a cat's are one of the reasons the kiwi is sometimes described as an honorary mammal.
Q 29Which vital sign of the kiwi is unusually low for a bird and sits much closer to a human's?
Body temperature
Body temperature in a kiwi runs at 37 to 38°C, against 39 to 42°C for most birds, which may be why its eggs take so long to hatch.
Q 30Māori tradition placed the kiwi under the protection of which god of the forest and its birds?
Tāne Mahuta
Tāne Mahuta is why the kiwi is known as the hidden bird of Tāne, and some Māori still regard themselves as the bird's guardians.