Mealworms
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40 free Mealworms trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Mealworms look like the dullest animals in the pet shop, yet they have one of the strangest histories in the insect world. They are not worms at all but the young of a darkling beetle, and they have flown around the Moon, fed crews in sealed habitats and surprised scientists with what they can digest. This quiz gathers the fun facts about meal worms that people actually ask about: how the life cycle works, what the larvae eat and drink, how keepers raise and store them, which animals love them, and how they ended up on human menus. A few questions cover their relatives and the Latin behind their name. It suits curious kids, classroom projects, reptile and bird keepers, and anyone who wants a quick, surprising round of insect trivia. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which packaging plastic did lab mealworms live on in a 2015 study that stunned waste researchers?
Styrofoam
Styrofoam was thought to be non-biodegradable until that study, in which mealworms fed nothing else stayed as healthy as those on a normal diet.
Q 02Mealworms were among the first Earth creatures to circle the Moon, aboard a 1968 probe from which country?
The USSR
The USSR flew them on Zond 5, which swung round the Moon and splashed down in the Indian Ocean with its living cargo safe.
Q 03Which North American birds do nest-box fans famously tempt into their gardens with dishes of live mealworms?
Bluebirds
Bluebirds take mealworms so readily that fans use them to lure pairs to a nest box and to feed chicks when bad weather hides wild insects.
Q 04What is the name of the motionless, non-feeding stage a mealworm enters before emerging as an adult beetle?
Pupa
Pupa is the stage in which the mealworm's body is rebuilt into a beetle's; it starts out pale and darkens just before the adult breaks free.
Q 05Which of these insects shares the mealworm's four-stage life cycle, with a motionless resting stage before adulthood?
Butterfly
Butterfly and mealworm both pass from egg to larva to a resting stage and then adult, which is why the young look nothing like their parents.
Q 06Which Alpine country approved mealworms as food for people in May 2017, opening the door to insect burgers?
Switzerland
Switzerland cleared mealworms for the dinner table in May 2017, though most insect foods on sale are still snacks and bars, not meat replacements.
Q 07Mealworms were the main meat for volunteers sealed inside Lunar Palace 1, a mock Moon base in which country?
China
China built Lunar Palace 1 in Beijing, where a crew of three spent 105 days in 2014 raising their own crops and mealworms to eat.
Q 08Where do keepers store live mealworms for weeks to slow their growth and delay the change into beetles?
In a refrigerator
In a refrigerator, a mealworm's metabolism slows so far that a tub can be held for a few weeks, or even several months, before use.
Q 09Which dry food do keepers typically fill a mealworm tub with, so it serves as both bedding and dinner?
Wheat bran
Wheat bran is both bed and dinner for mealworms, which burrow through it and need only a piece of fruit or vegetable on top for moisture.
Q 10Despite the name, a mealworm is no worm; which feature, shared with adult beetles, gives it away?
Six jointed legs
Six jointed legs mark a mealworm as an insect larva, the young of a darkling beetle, whereas a true worm has no limbs at all.
Q 11Which tough material forms a mealworm's outer skeleton, just as it does a crab's shell?
Chitin
Chitin builds the armour of insects and crustaceans alike, and its toughness is why some reptiles digest hard-skinned mealworms poorly.
Q 12In 2021 dried mealworms became the first insect food authorised for sale across which group of countries?
The European Union
The European Union authorised dried mealworms in June 2021 after its food-safety agency judged them safe, its first such verdict on any insect.
Q 13People with an allergy to which food are warned that eating mealworms could trigger a reaction too?
Shrimp
Shrimp and mealworms carry similar muscle molecules, so antibodies primed against one can react to the other, as they also can with dust mites.
Q 21Which naturalist gave the mealworm beetle its Latin name, Tenebrio molitor, in the 1758 edition of Systema Naturae?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus chose the genus name Tenebrio, Latin for one who shuns the light, a fair label for insects that hide in dark corners.
Q 22The 'molitor' in the mealworm's scientific name, Tenebrio molitor, is Latin for which grain-handling trade?
Miller
Miller is the meaning of molitor, a nod to the mills and grain stores where the larvae have long turned up as pests.
Q 23Which name do pet shops give Zophobas larvae, the mealworm's giant cousins from tropical Central and South America?
Superworms
Superworms reach 50 to 60 millimetres, about twice a mealworm's length, and the adults can release a pungent defensive chemical when provoked.
Q 14Which mineral are shop-bought mealworms so short of that reptile keepers boost it before feeding time?
Calcium
Calcium is so scarce in shop-bought mealworms that pets raised on them risk deficiency disorders, so keepers fatten the larvae on a mineral-rich diet first.
Q 15Which reptiles rode alongside mealworms on the first animal flight around the Moon in 1968?
Tortoises
Tortoises, two of them, came home alive from the week-long trip, having lost about a tenth of their body weight on the way.
Q 16With no water dish in the tub, mealworms usually get their moisture from a slice of which vegetable?
Potato
Potato slices give mealworms all the water they need, and an open dish is skipped because too much damp turns the bedding mouldy and kills them.
Q 17What inside a mealworm does the real work of breaking down plastic, according to the 2015 studies?
Its gut bacteria
Its gut bacteria do the digesting: dose a mealworm with antibiotics and it can no longer break plastic down.
Q 18Mealworm beetles can carry the young of a tapeworm whose usual final host is which animal?
Rats
Rats pass the tapeworm's eggs in their droppings, mealworms swallow them while feeding, and the cycle closes when a rodent eats an infected beetle.
Q 19In which African desert do darkling beetles, the mealworm's family, drink by catching fog on their backs?
Namib
Namib fog is these beetles' water supply: droplets gather on their wing cases and run down their backs to the mouth.
Q 20The lesser mealworm, also called the litter beetle, is a notorious pest in sheds full of which farm animals?
Chickens
Chickens can catch dozens of diseases from lesser mealworms, which live in the floor litter and are eaten by pecking chicks.
Q 24Under which trade name are lesser mealworms, a smaller relative also farmed as food, usually marketed?
Buffalo worms
Buffalo worms are barely a centimetre long when fully grown, less than half the size of an ordinary mealworm.
Q 25What do commercial growers add to the feed of 'giant' mealworms to make them outgrow ordinary ones?
Juvenile hormone
Juvenile hormone holds a mealworm in its larval stage, so instead of changing it keeps eating and swells to an abnormal size.
Q 26What do entomologists call each growth stage of a mealworm larva between one moult and the next?
Instar
Instar is the term, and a mealworm must shed its skin to enter each new one because its hard outer casing cannot stretch as it grows.
Q 27What are the hardened front wings called that cover an adult mealworm beetle's back like a shield?
Elytra
Elytra are covers, not flight wings: a beetle lifts them to unfold the flying pair beneath, though mealworm beetles rarely bother to take off.
Q 28Mealworms belong to which insect order, the largest of all, whose name means 'sheath wings' in Greek?
Coleoptera
Coleoptera, the beetles, number about 400,000 described species, roughly a quarter of all known animal species.
Q 29What is the term for insect droppings, which build up in a mealworm tub and are sold as fertiliser?
Frass
Frass from insect farms is sold as a plant fertiliser, and at home a whiff of ammonia from the tub means it is time to sift it out.
Q 30What do male mealworm beetles release to attract a mate, a signal that grows weaker in inbred males?
A pheromone
A pheromone from the male does the wooing, and females can smell the difference: they prefer the scent of outbred, well-fed males.