Life Cycles
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40 free Life Cycles trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every living thing has a life cycle: it starts out, grows, changes, reproduces and eventually dies. The details are where it gets strange. Some animals rebuild their whole bodies partway through, some spend years hidden away before a few days in the open air, and a few have fathers that do the job you would expect of a mother. This quiz covers the life cycles of animals and plants: insects and the stages of metamorphosis, frogs and other animals that begin life in water, fish that travel huge distances to breed, birds, reptiles and mammals, and how flowering plants get from seed to seed. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you guess wrong. It is pitched for students revising a science unit, teachers who want a ready-made class quiz, and anyone who simply likes animals. Play it on screen or print it for the classroom.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which reef fish, made famous by Finding Nemo, has a breeding male that turns female when the group's female dies?
Clownfish
Clownfish live in a strict size ranking around one anemone, so when the female is lost the male changes sex and the largest non-breeder steps up as the new male.
Q 02In which fish does the male carry the female's eggs in a pouch on his body until they hatch?
Seahorse
Seahorse fathers carry the eggs for 9 to 45 days, then release fully formed but very small young into the water.
Q 03Which sea animal has a species nicknamed 'immortal' because the adult can revert to its juvenile polyp stage?
Jellyfish
Jellyfish of the species Turritopsis dohrnii can turn back into a seabed-bound polyp after reaching maturity, then grow up all over again.
Q 04Which cold-water fish, the longest-lived vertebrate known, is thought to reach breeding age at around 150 years old?
Greenland shark
Greenland shark lifespans are estimated at 272 years or more, and the pups are born alive after a pregnancy thought to last 8 to 18 years.
Q 05Which North American insects spend 13 or 17 years underground as juveniles before emerging together in huge broods?
Cicadas
Cicadas of the periodical kind may owe those prime-number waits to their enemies: one idea is that 13 and 17 years are hard for predators with shorter cycles to match.
Q 06Which bird's male alone warms its one egg through the Antarctic winter, eating nothing for over two months?
Emperor penguin
Emperor penguin males lose around 12 kg during the fast, and in every other species of the family both parents take turns on the egg.
Q 07Which Australian mammal lays eggs instead of giving birth to live young, a trait shared only with echidnas?
Platypus
Platypus eggs place the animal among the monotremes, and the egg-laying, beaver-tailed creature baffled the first European naturalists who examined it.
Q 08Which fish hatches in freshwater streams, matures in the ocean, and then swims back upriver to its birthplace to breed?
Salmon
Salmon of every Pacific species die within days or weeks of spawning, and their bodies feed the streams where the next generation will hatch.
Q 09Which sea animal's mother guards her eggs in a den until they hatch and then dies, as the father already has?
Octopus
Octopus parents breed just once: in most species the male dies after mating, and the female after tending her eggs to hatching.
Q 10What is the name for the legless, tailed young of a frog, a word that comes from 'toad' and 'head'?
Tadpole
Tadpole bodies are rebuilt for land: the tail is absorbed into the body, and the gut shortens as a plant diet gives way to hunting.
Q 11What is the name for a butterfly's hard-skinned pupa, a word that comes from the Greek for gold?
Chrysalis
Chrysalis cases of many butterflies have a metallic gold sheen, which earned the name, while a cocoon is a separate silk casing spun mostly by moths.
Q 12What is the common name for the leaf-eating larval stage of butterflies and moths, known for its voracious appetite?
Caterpillar
Caterpillar growth is explosive: a tobacco hornworm multiplies its weight ten-thousandfold in less than twenty days.
Q 13What is the name for the young of insects such as crickets and cockroaches, which resemble small wingless adults?
Nymph
Nymph stages skip the pupa entirely, so the insect reaches adulthood through a series of gradual changes instead of one dramatic transformation.
Q 21Which insect undergoes incomplete metamorphosis, growing wing-buds through several stages with no pupal stage at all?
Grasshopper
Grasshopper hatchlings already look like miniature adults and simply grow more like them at each stage, the wing-buds enlarging every time.
Q 22The axolotl, a zoo and aquarium favourite that never outgrows its larval form, is which kind of animal?
Salamander
Salamander species normally transform for life on land, but the axolotl breeds while still a water-dwelling juvenile, a trait known as neoteny.
Q 23What is the botanical name for a 'seed leaf', the first leaf to appear from a sprouting seed?
Cotyledon
Cotyledon number is how botanists sort the flowering plants into two great groups: monocots have one and dicots have two.
Q 14Monarch butterfly larvae feed only on which plant, whose toxins make the insects taste bad to predators?
Milkweed
Milkweed leaves are where the females lay their eggs one at a time, and the plant's cardiac glycosides stay in the insect's body as a chemical defence.
Q 15What is the common name for the larva of a housefly or blowfly, used in forensics to estimate time of death?
Maggot
Maggot development runs to a predictable timetable, so the stage reached by those found on a body helps investigators work out how long ago the person died.
Q 16Silkworms, the larvae of the domestic silk moth, feed almost entirely on the leaves of which tree?
Mulberry
Mulberry leaves give off an odour that attracts the larvae, which prefer the white species of the tree above all others.
Q 17Which insect's adults cannot feed, with the females of one species living for less than five minutes?
Mayfly
Mayfly adults exist only to breed: their digestive systems are filled with air, and all the eating is done earlier, during the underwater young stage.
Q 18Which biting insect lays its eggs in stagnant water, where the larvae hang at the surface to breathe through a siphon?
Mosquito
Mosquito life is mostly aquatic: the egg, larva and pupa all develop in water, and only the winged adult leaves it.
Q 19Which insect's aquatic young catch prey by shooting out an extensible lower lip armed with hooks and spines?
Dragonfly
Dragonfly young keep the lip folded under the body, then fire it out at great speed using pressure from the abdominal muscles.
Q 20In a honeybee colony, which stingless male bees develop from eggs that have been left unfertilised?
Drones
Drones therefore have a mother but no father, while a fertilised larva becomes a queen only if it is fed solely on royal jelly.
Q 24Which organs, which disappear as the lungs develop, allow a newly hatched frog to breathe underwater?
Gills
Gills begin on the outside of the body and are soon covered over by skin, before disappearing altogether as the front legs emerge.
Q 25European eels leave their rivers and cross the ocean to spawn in which sea of the North Atlantic?
Sargasso Sea
Sargasso Sea waters were named the likely spawning ground by Danish researcher Johannes Schmidt in the early 1900s, and a later breeding project used a swimming machine to mimic the journey.
Q 26In American alligators, which condition inside the nest decides whether an egg hatches as a male or a female?
Temperature
Temperature between about 32.5 and 33.5 °C produces males, while nests below 31.5 °C or above 34.5 °C produce females.
Q 27What is the name for the temporary sharp projection on a chick's bill, used to break out of the shell?
Egg tooth
Egg tooth use is brief: after hatching it falls off or is absorbed into the growing bill, and baby crocodiles carry one on the snout for the same job.
Q 28Which bird lays its eggs in the nests of smaller species such as reed warblers, leaving them to raise its chick?
Cuckoo
Cuckoo eggs are larger than those of the foster parents, yet in each type of host nest they resemble the host's own eggs.
Q 29What is the name for a young kangaroo, which is about the size of a lima bean when it is born?
Joey
Joey development is finished outside the womb: the tiny newborn climbs into the mother's pouch and usually stays there for about nine months.
Q 30Which animal has the longest pregnancy of any mammal, carrying its calf for around 22 months?
Elephant
Elephant pregnancies run so long that the foetus gets extra time to develop, particularly its brain and trunk.