Llama Trivia
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60 free Llama trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
59 free Llama trivia questions with answers. Llamas are the friendliest-looking animals to have carried an empire on their backs, and this quiz covers everything about them: what a baby is called, why they spit, the strange 'orgle' mating call, how they guard sheep from coyotes, and how they survive on so little water. It also covers their wild cousins the guanaco and vicuña, how to tell a llama from an alpaca, and their history from the Moche and the Inca to the 300,000 that hauled silver from Potosí. Easy questions ask which continent llamas come from and what the baby is called; the hard ones want the gestation period, the number of stomach compartments, the North American origin of the camel family and the price a llama fetched at the peak of the 1990s American llama bubble. There is a fun round on llamas in pop culture too: The Emperor's New Groove, Fortnite's loot piñatas, The Sims and Llamas with Hats. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the llama and its relatives, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Spanish phrase 'cómo se llama' has nothing to do with llamas; what does it ask for?
Someone's name
Someone's name. The 'llama' here is part of the verb llamarse, to be called, so the phrase means 'what is he called?', and most Spanish speakers say it 'yama'.
Q 02What is a baby llama called?
A cria
A cria. The word comes from Spanish cría, a suckling young animal, and it fits: for its first few days a newborn llama nurses in short bouts every hour or two.
Q 03Llamas belong to which family of animals?
Camels
Camels. Llamas are humpless members of the camel family, close enough kin that in 1998 scientists in Dubai bred a camel-llama hybrid, the cama.
Q 04Which wild animal is the ancestor of the domestic llama?
The guanaco
The guanaco. Andean herders began taming it thousands of years ago for use as a pack animal, and it still runs wild from the high Andes to Patagonia.
Q 05Llamas are willing pack animals up to a point; what does one typically do when it is overloaded?
It refuses to move
It refuses to move. An overloaded llama sinks to the ground and may hiss, spit or kick until its pack is lightened; fairly loaded, it will cover 25 kilometres or more in a day.
Q 06From which language did Europeans adopt the word 'llama'?
Quechua
Quechua. Spanish borrowed the word in the 1530s, and an old spelling, 'glama', survives in the animal's scientific name, Lama glama.
Q 07Where did the llama's earliest ancestors evolve, some 40 million years ago?
North America
North America. The llama's ancestors lived there for tens of millions of years; some walked south once the Isthmus of Panama rose about three million years ago, and those left behind died out by the end of the last ice age.
Q 08Which snack takes its name from ch'arki, a word from the llama's Andean homeland?
Jerky
Jerky. Ch'arki meant dried meat, llama included; Spanish speakers borrowed it as 'charqui', English ears turned that into 'jerky', and the verb 'to jerk' meat comes from the same word.
Q 09When a llama is truly furious, where does the foul-smelling spit it fires at a rival come from?
Its stomach
Its stomach. The spit is half-digested food brought up from a three-chambered stomach, and llamas so dislike the smell themselves that vets stop a spitter by draping a cloth over its nose.
Q 10Which feature of a llama's mouth lets it pluck single leaves and shoots with great precision?
A split upper lip
A split upper lip. Its two halves move independently and work like fingers, gripping a leaf or stem and drawing it into the mouth.
Q 11What is a llama's mating call, made by an aroused male, called?
An orgle
An orgle. The male strikes up the gargling, buzzing call as he mounts and keeps it going throughout, sometimes for as long as 45 minutes.
Q 12A llama's pregnancy lasts about eleven months, as long as that of which farm animal?
A horse
A horse: both carry their young for about eleven months. Within about two weeks of conceiving, a pregnant llama starts rejecting the male, often by spitting at him, which gives breeders an early sign.
Q 13Which routine job of a mother cow or ewe does a llama skip entirely after giving birth?
Licking the newborn clean
Q 21Why did ranchers find that one male guard llama protects a flock better than several?
Two males bond with each other
Two males bond with each other and may ignore the flock. A single male with no other llama for company adopts its charges as his herd instead, and needs no training to start seeing off dogs and coyotes.
Q 22'Berserk llama syndrome', in which a grown male attacks people as rivals, is caused by what in its youth?
Too much human handling
Too much human handling. A bottle-fed baby can imprint on people and, once grown, treat them as fellow llamas to be charged and kicked.
Q 23Antibodies from Winter, a llama living in Belgium, made headlines for neutralising the virus behind which disease?
Licking the newborn clean. A llama mother nuzzles her baby and touches noses with it but never licks it dry, and the youngster is usually on its feet within the hour all the same.
Q 14In what position do llamas mate, unusually for a large animal?
Lying down
Lying down. The female drops onto her chest with her legs folded beneath her, a pose llama keepers call the kush, and the pair may stay that way for up to 45 minutes.
Q 15At what time of day are most llama births?
Between 8 am and noon
Between 8 am and noon. Over 70 percent of births come in the morning, which is thought to give the newborn time to dry off and warm up before the freezing Andean night.
Q 16Which of these is a common way llamas communicate with each other?
Humming
Humming. Llamas hum when they are curious, worried or tired, and a mother hums to greet her newborn.
Q 17What does it usually mean when a llama lays its ears back?
It is unhappy or agitated
It is unhappy or agitated. Flattened ears are the first warning: ignore them and the llama pins them tighter, tips its nose skyward and finally spits.
Q 18Among llamas themselves, what is the usual reason for spitting?
To discipline lower-ranked animals
To discipline lower-ranked animals. Spitting settles the pecking order, above all over who eats first, and a well-raised llama seldom spits at people at all.
Q 19Which of these is a typical move when two male llamas spar?
Neck wrestling
Neck wrestling. Each male wraps his neck around his rival's and bites at his legs, trying to force him to the ground; the loser gives in with his neck lowered and his tail raised.
Q 20On ranches in the western United States, guard llamas most often protect which livestock?
Sheep and goats
Sheep and goats. The llama adopts the flock as its own herd, sounds an alarm cry and charges at coyotes and dogs; over half the ranchers in one Iowa State survey said their predator losses stopped completely.
COVID-19
COVID-19. Winter's antibodies had already beaten the related SARS and MERS viruses in the lab, and llama antibodies are so much smaller than ours that they are known as nanobodies.
Q 24Which invention was missing from Inca transport, leaving llama caravans to carry the empire's goods?
The wheel
The wheel. Inca roads were never meant for carts: they climbed the Andes by long flights of stone steps, built for travellers on foot and llamas under packs.
Q 25Early Spanish chroniclers in the Andes described the llama with their word for which farm animal?
Sheep
Sheep. One chronicler called the Inca's llama herders 'shepherds', and he described Urcuchillay, the star-god they prayed to for their flocks, as a ram of many colours.
Q 26Why do herders on the high Andes burn dried llama dung as fuel?
Almost no trees grow there
Almost no trees grow there, so dung does the work of firewood: it even fuelled the steam engine of the Yavari, a British-built ship that sailed Lake Titicaca.
Q 27Inca skywatchers traced a mother llama not from stars but from the dark clouds of what?
The Milky Way
The Milky Way. Alpha and Beta Centauri are her eyes and a smaller dark patch beneath her is her nursing baby; herders believed this heavenly llama gave life to the flocks on Earth.
Q 28Under Spanish rule, great caravans of llamas hauled silver ore from the mines at which Bolivian city?
Potosí
Potosí. One Spanish observer reckoned that as many as 300,000 llamas worked the traffic from its mines alone, a trade later taken over largely by horses, mules and donkeys.
Q 29Llamas were first brought to the United States in the late 1800s for what purpose?
Zoo exhibits
Zoo exhibits. A ban on South American hoofed stock, meant to keep out foot-and-mouth disease, then held numbers down for decades, and llamas stayed a zoo curiosity until ranchers took them up in the 1970s.
Q 30In America's llama boom of the 1980s and 1990s, what were investors mainly buying?
Breeding stock
Breeding stock. With little market for the wool or meat, each buyer was counting on selling offspring to the next; when the bubble burst, the US herd fell from about 145,000 in 2002 to under 40,000 by 2017.