Loggerhead Sea Turtle
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Loggerhead Sea Turtle trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The loggerhead is the sea turtle that people on American shores are most likely to meet: a heavy-jawed ocean wanderer that hauls itself up a dark beach, digs a nest and is gone again before sunrise. Behind that brief visit lies one of the longest and strangest life stories in the sea. This quiz turns the best loggerhead fun facts into questions. It covers how hatchlings find the water, what decides whether an egg becomes a male or a female, what the adults crush for dinner, how far a tagged turtle can travel, and which animals and human habits put nests at risk. It suits beach lovers, students, teachers planning an ocean unit and anyone who has seen a nest roped off on a summer shoreline. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more about loggerheads than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A nesting loggerhead appears to weep on the beach because glands behind its eyes are doing which job?
Shedding excess salt
Shedding excess salt is the glands' real job, because a loggerhead takes in seawater as it feeds. Out of the water, the briny runoff simply looks like crying.
Q 02What decides whether a loggerhead hatchling is male or female during the two months its egg spends buried?
Nest temperature
Nest temperature decides it: warmer sand produces females and cooler sand males. Beaches that ran unusually hot for three years hatched broods that were 87 to 99 percent female.
Q 03Adelita the loggerhead became the first animal tracked by satellite across an ocean when she swam to which country?
Japan
Japan was Adelita's destination in 1996, a swim of about 14,500 km. It was evidence that loggerheads feeding off Mexico go back to breed on shores a whole ocean away.
Q 04A loggerhead may swallow a floating plastic bag because it resembles which drifting prey eaten on open-sea crossings?
Jellyfish
Jellyfish are a staple for loggerheads crossing open water, and a drifting bag looks much the same. Swallowed plastic can block the gut and leave a turtle to starve.
Q 05Unlike a box turtle or a tortoise, what is a loggerhead sea turtle unable to do with its shell?
Pull its head inside
Pull its head inside is beyond a loggerhead, and its flippers stay out too. The shell still works as armor, and an adult's sheer bulk deters all but the largest ocean hunters.
Q 06Which cue do loggerhead hatchlings follow to find the sea at night, a habit that strands thousands on built-up coasts?
The brightest horizon
The brightest horizon normally lies over the water, lit by moon and stars. Streetlights and porch lamps outshine that glow, luring hatchlings inland to dry out or be eaten.
Q 07Where does a female loggerhead sea turtle usually go to lay eggs, often decades after last seeing the place?
Her own birth beach
Her own birth beach, or one close by, is where a loggerhead nests, even after decades at sea. Some swim thousands of miles from their feeding grounds to reach it.
Q 08Which feat can a wintering loggerhead keep up for seven hours or more at a stretch in cold seas?
Hold its breath underwater
Hold its breath underwater is the feat: in the coldest months a loggerhead comes up for only about seven minutes between dives. Few air-breathing sea animals stay down as long.
Q 09Which mammal, booming in American suburbs, is the most destructive raider of loggerhead nests in the Southeast?
Raccoon
Raccoon raids have wiped out nearly every clutch laid in a season on some Florida beaches. Wire mesh fixed over the nests now keeps most of the eggs out of reach.
Q 10Which ocean predators have left bite wounds on up to 40 percent of nesting female loggerheads around the world?
Sharks
Sharks are the suspects: tiger, bull and great white sharks are among the few hunters big enough to tackle an adult. Eggs and hatchlings face a far longer list, from ants to gulls.
Q 11Which color is the slightly heart-shaped top shell of an adult loggerhead sea turtle?
Reddish-brown
Reddish-brown is the adult's color, set off by a pale yellow underside. Hatchlings start out mostly dark brown and gain the rusty tones as they grow.
Q 12Which crusty hitchhikers commonly stud the shell of a loggerhead sea turtle?
Barnacles
Barnacles are among more than a hundred kinds of animal found living on loggerheads. The extra drag does the turtle no known good, though a duller shell may hide it better.
Q 13Once a hatchling has reached the sea, which loggerhead sea turtles will ever deliberately crawl ashore again?
Only egg-laying females
Q 21Which fishing boats must fit turtle excluder devices, escape hatches that let a netted loggerhead swim free?
Shrimp trawlers
Shrimp trawlers drag fine-meshed nets along the bottom, where a trapped turtle can drown. Since 1989 the US has refused shrimp imports from fleets that fish in ways that harm sea turtles.
Q 22Which animal, brought to Australia by British settlers, once ate up to 95 percent of loggerhead clutches on one coast?
Red fox
Red fox culls in the 1980s and 1990s eased the damage. The species had been released in the 19th century, and by the 1970s it was emptying nests along part of the eastern seaboard.
Q 23Roughly how many eggs go into each nest that a loggerhead sea turtle digs, some two weeks apart, in a season?
About 100
Only egg-laying females come back, for an hour or two per nest. A male that reaches the surf as a hatchling may live out the rest of his decades-long life at sea.
Q 14Which body parts does a nesting loggerhead use as scoops to dig the deep chamber that will hold the eggs?
Hind flippers
Hind flippers do the digging, once the turtle has scraped out a shallow body pit. She then buries the clutch, covers the pit with sand and heads back to the waves.
Q 15Which party decoration does NOAA ask people never to release outdoors because loggerheads swallow the remains at sea?
Balloons
Balloons that drift out over the ocean look like food to a turtle, and their strings can entangle it. Fishing line, tar and plastic fragments turn up in loggerhead stomachs too.
Q 16The loggerhead is named for a huge head whose jaw muscles crush whelks and which other hard-shelled sea snail?
Conch
Conch and whelk shells give way to jaws that make the loggerhead a specialist in armored prey. No other sea turtle has a longer list of known foods.
Q 17Which US state, home to Hilton Head Island, made the loggerhead its official state reptile in 1988?
South Carolina
South Carolina chose a turtle that nests along its own shore. On Hilton Head, a town rule says beachfront lights must be shielded or switched off by 10 p.m. to protect it.
Q 18Which invisible guide do loggerheads sense to hold a course across thousands of miles of open ocean?
Earth's magnetic field
Earth's magnetic field gives loggerheads both a compass and a map. Hatchlings swimming in a pool turned to new headings when coils copied the field of distant parts of the Atlantic.
Q 19Which feature, much longer and thicker in males, lets observers tell adult male and female loggerheads apart?
Tail
Tail size is the clearest clue, and males also carry longer claws. Before adulthood the sexes look the same from outside, so researchers need lab tests to sort juveniles.
Q 20Young loggerheads shelter for years in floating mats of which brown seaweed, the namesake of an Atlantic sea?
Sargassum
Sargassum mats give young turtles both cover and a floating larder of fish eggs and tiny drifting animals. Even ants and beetles blown out to sea end up on the menu.
About 100 eggs fill each nest, and a female may dig three to five nests in one season. After that effort she waits two or three years before breeding again.
Q 24What do loggerhead hatchlings do for roughly their first 20 hours after crawling into the surf?
Swim nonstop offshore
Swim nonstop offshore: the marathon takes them far out to sea. The crawl beforehand is costly too, drying away up to a fifth of a hatchling's body mass.
Q 25Which so-called living fossil, little changed in 250 million years, is a regular item on the loggerhead's menu?
Horseshoe crab
Horseshoe crab is on the list beside whelks and other shellfish from the seabed. Loggerheads switch to this bottom-feeding diet after years of eating whatever floats past.
Q 26Which fishing term covers loggerhead sea turtles hooked or netted by accident, their greatest ongoing threat worldwide?
Bycatch
Bycatch on longlines and in gillnets can drown a turtle or leave it with a swallowed hook. Gillnet bans and seasonal closures are among the fixes now in use.
Q 27Which warm Atlantic current are young loggerheads thought to ride from the American coast to mid-ocean nurseries?
Gulf Stream
Gulf Stream waters are thought to carry the young out to mid-ocean, where drifting seaweed hides them from predators. It forms one side of a current loop whose mild waters suit a growing turtle.
Q 28Yoshi the loggerhead swam 37,000 km to Australia after 20 years in an aquarium in which African city?
Cape Town
Cape Town's Two Oceans Aquarium took Yoshi in as a 2 kg juvenile in 1997 and released her at 183 kg. She then averaged about 48 km a day for more than two years.
Q 29Which term do biologists use for the pale-yellow underside of a loggerhead's shell, also called the lower shell?
Plastron
Plastron is the belly plate, joined to the domed upper shell by three pairs of bridging plates. Its own plates come in six named pairs, among them the humeral, pectoral and abdominal.
Q 30Which Arabian country, home to Masirah Island, hosts one of the world's largest loggerhead nesting populations?
Oman
Oman is the loggerhead's biggest nesting ground in the Indian Ocean, yet trend studies show its population is declining.