Lizard Trivia
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49 free Lizard trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
46 free lizard trivia questions with answers. There are more than 7,000 species of lizard, and this quiz gets around a good many of them. Forty-six questions cover the Komodo dragon's venomous bite, how a chameleon really changes colour, why geckos can walk on glass, the Gila monster's role in a diabetes drug, the basilisk that sprints across rivers, the thorny devil that drinks through its skin, marine iguanas that sneeze salt, and the slow worm that everyone mistakes for a snake. Easy questions ask which lizard is the biggest and where Komodo dragons live; the hard ones want the number of setae on a gecko's foot, the drug made from Gila monster saliva and the record age of a slow worm at Copenhagen Zoo. Good for animal lovers, classrooms and anyone who has ever kept a bearded dragon. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the species involved, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how many species of lizard have scientists described so far?
About 8,000
About 8,000 lizards were on the Reptile Database's list by 2026, nearly twice the number of snakes, and the total keeps climbing because some 200 new reptile species are described every year.
Q 02What is the largest living lizard?
Komodo dragon
Komodo dragon: males can top three metres, and the serrated edges of its teeth are tipped with iron, an orange coating that keeps them sharp enough to slice through a deer.
Q 03The world's largest lizard is native to islands in which country?
Indonesia
Indonesia: the lizards survive on a handful of its Lesser Sunda islands, where hatchlings climb straight into the trees and roll in dung so that the cannibal adults leave them alone.
Q 04Which animal, far heavier than itself, is among the prey of the world's largest lizard?
Water buffalo
Water buffalo, deer and wild pigs are all on its menu: the lizard lies in wait beside a game trail, slashes with serrated teeth, and its venom keeps the wound bleeding.
Q 05The world's largest lizard tracks carrion from kilometres away using which body part?
Its forked tongue
Its forked tongue, not its nostrils, does the smelling: it samples the air and carries the scent to an organ in the roof of the mouth, while the lizard swings its head from side to side as it walks.
Q 06A 1926 hunt for the world's largest lizard inspired which film?
King Kong
King Kong: producer Merian Cooper read his friend Douglas Burden's account of hunting giant lizards on a remote island, and at first planned a film in which a gorilla fought them.
Q 07Flora, a giant lizard at Chester Zoo, made headlines for laying viable eggs despite what?
Never having met a male
Never having met a male did not stop Flora laying 11 eggs in 2006, and they were due to hatch around Christmas, which the zoo's curator said would suit a virgin birth nicely.
Q 08Male anoles display to rivals and mates by fanning out a colourful throat flap called what?
A dewlap
A dewlap is usually a different colour from the rest of the anole, so it catches the eye from a distance, and the male flashes it open and shut while bobbing his head up and down.
Q 09The Gila monster is the only venomous lizard native to which country?
The United States
The United States: it lives in the deserts of the Southwest, takes its name from Arizona's Gila River, and spends most of its life underground, since a few big meals may feed it for a year.
Q 10Exenatide, a drug copied from a hormone in Gila monster venom, is prescribed for which condition?
Type 2 diabetes
Type 2 diabetes: a doctor testing venoms in 1990 found a Gila monster hormone that prompts the pancreas to release insulin, and a synthetic copy of it went on sale as Byetta in 2005.
Q 11Where does a Gila monster store the fat that lets it live on a few large meals a year?
In its tail
In its tail: a Gila monster can swallow a third of its own weight in eggs and nestlings at one sitting, then live off the fat in its plump tail through the months it spends in a burrow.
Q 12On the standard explanation, the millions of tiny hairs on a gecko's feet grip walls using which force?
Van der Waals forces
Van der Waals forces are faint attractions between molecules, but a gecko's foot has so many hair tips touching the wall that they add up to hold its weight with no glue, though one 2014 study credits static charge instead.
Q 13Blue-tongued skinks stick out their vivid tongues mainly to do what?
Q 21The basilisk lizard's name comes from a Greek word meaning what?
Little king
Little king: the Greek basiliskos was a legendary serpent, said by Pliny to wear a crown-like crest on its head, and the lizard was given the name in turn because of the crest on its own.
Q 22Horned lizards defend themselves against dogs and cats by squirting what from near their eyes?
A stream of blood
A stream of blood: the lizard dams the flow leaving its head until tiny vessels round the eyelids burst, and the jet tastes foul to dogs and coyotes, though birds of prey seem not to mind it.
Q 23The horned lizard's diet is built mostly around which insects?
Harvester ants
Scare off predators
Scare off predators: a cornered skink turns to face the threat, gapes and pushes out a broad blue tongue against a bright pink mouth, a bluff that it backs up by hissing and flattening its body.
Q 14Unlike most lizards, geckos are noted for doing what when courting or defending territory?
Vocalising
Vocalising: geckos chirp, click and bark at mates and rivals, and the word 'gecko' itself comes from a Malay name that is said to imitate one species' call.
Q 15How do most geckos, which lack eyelids, keep their eyes clean?
They lick them
They lick them: with no lids to blink, each eye sits behind a clear, fixed scale, and the gecko wipes dust and grit off it with its long tongue.
Q 16The largest living gecko, Rhacodactylus leachianus, comes from which Pacific territory?
New Caledonia
New Caledonia: its giant gecko is a case of island gigantism, and the islands probably once held an even bigger one, about 60 cm long, known only from a stuffed specimen found in a French museum basement.
Q 17More chameleon species live on which island than anywhere else on Earth?
Madagascar
Madagascar holds at least half of all chameleon species, including the world's smallest, and several are now critically endangered as their forest is logged and burned for farmland.
Q 18How far can a chameleon shoot its tongue, compared with its body?
Twice its length
Twice its length, and a little more in the smallest species, which outshoot the big ones; the tip is a ball of muscle that forms a suction cup as it hits the insect and hauls it back.
Q 19The word 'chameleon' comes from Greek words meaning what?
Ground lion
Ground lion: the Greek name joins khamai, 'on the ground', and leon, 'lion', perhaps because the crest on some species' heads reminded people of a lion's mane.
Q 20The common basilisk's nickname 'Jesus Christ lizard' refers to its ability to do what?
Run across water
Run across water: fringed hind toes spread on the surface and each hard slap traps a pocket of air that holds the lizard up for a few metres, and when it finally sinks it simply swims on.
Harvester ants make up most of its meals, so where pesticides and invading fire ants have wiped out the ant colonies, the lizards have disappeared too.
Q 24The Texas horned lizard, nicknamed the 'horned frog', gives its name to which university's sports teams?
Texas Christian University
Texas Christian University has fielded Horned Frogs since the 1890s, although the state reptile on its seal is a lizard, called a frog or toad only because of its squat, round body.
Q 25How does the thorny devil, a spiny desert lizard, get most of its drinking water?
Through channels in its skin
Through channels in its skin: grooves between the scales soak up dew and the moisture in damp sand and wick it by capillary action to the corners of the mouth, so the lizard can drink through its feet.
Q 26What does the thorny devil carry on the back of its neck to fool predators?
A false head
A false head: when threatened, the thorny devil tucks its real head between its front legs, leaving a predator to snap at the spiny knob of soft tissue on the back of its neck instead.
Q 27The thorny devil's scientific name, Moloch horridus, borrows 'Moloch' from what?
An ancient Near Eastern god
An ancient Near Eastern god, pictured as a hideous beast and linked in the Bible to child sacrifice, lent his name in 1841 to a lizard that is in fact a slow, harmless ant-eater no longer than a man's hand.
Q 28The marine iguana, the only lizard that forages in the sea, lives only on which islands?
The Galápagos
The Galápagos: their ancestors are thought to have drifted there from South America on rafts of debris, and Charles Darwin, meeting them on the lava, called them 'most disgusting, clumsy Lizards'.
Q 29How do marine iguanas get rid of the salt they swallow while grazing on algae?
Sneezing it out
Sneezing it out: glands by the nostrils filter salt from the blood, and each snort sprays a brine that dries into the white crust the iguanas wear on their heads like a wig.
Q 30During El Niño food shortages, marine iguanas have been shown to do what?
Shrink in body length by up to 20%
Shrink in body length by up to 20%: connective tissue can account for only about half of that, so even their bones are thought to shorten, and the iguanas grow back once the algae return.