Lake Baikal Trivia
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50 free Lake Baikal trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Lake Baikal trivia is a chance to test what you know about the most extreme lake on the planet: 1,642 metres deep, 25 to 30 million years old, holding around a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water in a rift that is still tearing open by four millimetres a year. It has its own seal, its own transparent oil-fish, giant amphipods, and water so clear you can see forty metres down in winter. This quiz covers the geography and hydrology (the three basins, the 330 inflowing rivers and the single outlet, the Selenga delta, the ice that carries a legal road to Olkhon Island), the endemic wildlife (nerpa, golomyanka, omul, sponges and Epischura), and the human story: Kurykans and Buryats, the Cossack who first saw it in 1643, the train ferry and the 'golden buckle' railway, the White Army's frozen retreat, Soviet scientists' fight against the Baykalsk pulp mill, Putin's submarine dive and the neutrino telescope suspended a kilometre down. Easy questions suit anyone who knows Baikal from a map; the expert tier is for limnologists and Trans-Siberian veterans. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the lake and its wildlife, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Lake Baikal is on which continent?
Asia
Asia. The lake lies deep in Siberia, far from any ocean, yet it has its own species of seal, the only one in the world that lives solely in fresh water.
Q 02Lake Baikal, the oldest and most voluminous freshwater lake, is also the world's what?
Deepest
Deepest. Its floor lies more than a kilometre below sea level, even though the lake's surface sits about 455 metres above it.
Q 03Lake Baikal holds roughly what share of all the fresh water on Earth's surface?
About 20%
About 20%. That is roughly as much as all five of North America's Great Lakes combined, though Lake Superior alone spreads over more than twice Baikal's area.
Q 04Roughly how old is Lake Baikal?
About 25 million years
About 25 million years. So much time in isolation let evolution run its own course: most of the animal species in the lake live nowhere else on Earth.
Q 05Lake Baikal's surface area is slightly larger than which European country?
Belgium
Belgium. Baikal covers more than 31,000 square kilometres, yet it is a long, narrow lake: about 636 km from end to end but less than 80 km across at its widest.
Q 06Lake Baikal sits in what kind of geological feature?
A rift valley
A rift valley. The Earth's crust is slowly pulling apart there, and as the gap widens the valley floor keeps sinking.
Q 07Which African lake is second only to Baikal in the volume of fresh water it holds?
Lake Tanganyika
Lake Tanganyika. Like Baikal it is long and narrow, but it lies in the tropics, with crocodiles and hippos along its shores instead of seals.
Q 08Seismic surveys show that Lake Baikal's water rests on a layer, several kilometres thick, of what?
Sediment
Sediment. Ice sheets never scraped it away, so cores drilled from it hold a record of the region's climate going back millions of years.
Q 09Which Siberian city stands on Lake Baikal's only outflowing river, about 70 km from the lake?
Irkutsk
Irkutsk. It began in the 1650s as a winter camp for collecting fur tribute and grew into the hub of Russia's overland trade with China and Mongolia.
Q 10Which river is the only one that flows out of Lake Baikal?
The Angara
The Angara. It is the lake's only exit, and a hydroelectric dam built across it in the 1950s raised the level of the entire lake.
Q 11Roughly how many rivers and streams flow into Lake Baikal?
About 330
About 330. Yet only a single river carries all of that water out again.
Q 12Which river, rising in Mongolia, provides almost half of Lake Baikal's inflow?
The Selenga
The Selenga. It is Mongolia's principal river, so close to half of the water flowing into Baikal begins its journey in another country.
Q 13How far down can you see through Lake Baikal's water at its clearest?
About 40 metres
About 40 metres. Baikal's water holds very few dissolved minerals, which helps make it one of the clearest lakes in the world.
Q 21How do Baikal seals breathe when the lake freezes over?
Through holes clawed in the ice
Through holes clawed in the ice. Each seal keeps its holes open all winter by scraping them with its strong claws, and it stays close to them until the thaw.
Q 22What colour is a Baikal seal pup's natal coat?
White
White. Pups are born on the lake ice in late winter and keep the woolly white coat for about six weeks before moulting into adult grey.
Q 23Which translucent, scaleless fish is the main food of the Baikal seal?
The golomyanka
The golomyanka. Also called the Baikal oilfish, it is the most abundant fish in the lake, yet it is not fished commercially because it never gathers in large shoals.
Q 14Lake Baikal's surface freezes over in January and usually stays frozen until which month?
May
May. The ice lingers longest in the north, and those frozen months are when the lake's seals give birth, raising their pups on the ice before it melts.
Q 15Which island is the largest in Lake Baikal?
Olkhon
Olkhon. Despite sitting in the middle of a vast lake it is a dry island: forest covers its north, but the south is open steppe grassland.
Q 16Which animal is the only known natural predator of adult Baikal seals?
The brown bear
The brown bear. Even bears catch them only occasionally, so apart from human hunters the seals have no other significant enemy.
Q 17The strait between Lake Baikal's largest island and its western shore is called Maloye More, meaning what?
The Little Sea
The Little Sea. Russians long spoke of Baikal itself as a sea, and the 19th-century folk song 'Glorious Sea, Sacred Baikal' still does.
Q 18Which Russian leader rode a mini-submarine to the bottom of Lake Baikal in 2009?
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin. Then prime minister, he surfaced saying he had seen practically no pollution, and soon afterwards ordered a shuttered lakeside mill to reopen.
Q 19What is the local name for the Baikal seal?
Nerpa
Nerpa. It is among the smallest of all seals, about 1.3 metres long, yet it can dive as deep as 400 metres to hunt.
Q 20The Baikal seal is most closely related to which Arctic species?
The ringed seal
The ringed seal. The two share the genus Pusa, which suggests the Baikal seal's ancestors came from Arctic waters, though how they reached a lake so far inland is still debated.
Q 24How do female Baikal oilfish reproduce?
They give birth to live larvae
They give birth to live larvae. The young develop inside the mother for about three months and emerge as a swarm of thousands instead of hatching from eggs.
Q 25Which whitefish found only in Lake Baikal is traditionally smoked and sold in lakeside markets?
The omul
The omul. Its stocks fell so far that in October 2017 Russia banned all commercial fishing for it, fearing irreversible harm to the population.
Q 26Scientists link the 'giant' size of some Lake Baikal crustaceans to the water's high level of what?
Oxygen
Oxygen. A 1999 study of 1,853 amphipod species worldwide found that the more of it the water holds, the larger they can grow, and Baikal's cold water is rich in it.
Q 27Which animals form branching green 'forests' on the bed of Lake Baikal?
Sponges
Sponges. Some stand a metre tall, unusually big for fresh water, and scientists reported in 2017 that many of these underwater forests had died.
Q 28The Barguzin reserve, founded on Lake Baikal's shore in 1916, was created to protect which prized fur animal?
The sable
The sable. Barguzin's sables were famed for near-black fur that fetched very high prices, so the reserve was set up to rebuild their numbers.
Q 29Which Russian writer crossed Lake Baikal by steamer in 1890 on his way to Sakhalin?
Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov. In a letter home he called the water turquoise and so clear that seeing rocks far below 'sent a shiver all over' him.
Q 30Which indigenous people raise goats, camels and horses on Lake Baikal's eastern shore?
The Buryats
The Buryats. They are the northernmost of the main Mongol peoples and traditionally nomadic herders, which is why camels can be found grazing beside a Siberian lake.