Orcas
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90 free Orcas trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
10 free orcas trivia questions with answers. Dive into the fascinating world of orcas with our comprehensive trivia quiz! These intelligent marine mammals are among the ocean's most remarkable predators, and there's much to learn about their behavior, intelligence, and unique hunting strategies. Test your knowledge with our 90-question quiz and discover how much you really know about killer whales.
30 of 90 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Orcas are the largest members of which animal family?
Delphinidae
Delphinidae, the oceanic dolphins, also takes in pilot whales and false killer whales, which are dolphins too despite the 'whale' in their common names.
Q 02What is the genus name for orcas?
Orcinus
Orcinus has a single living species, Orcinus orca, although a 2024 study argued that the North Pacific's fish-eating residents and mammal-hunting transients each deserve species rank.
Q 03What happens to an orca's heart rate when it dives?
It halves
It halves: one study measured roughly 60 beats a minute at the surface and 30 under water, a response that saves oxygen for the heart, lungs and brain.
Q 04What is the grey marking just behind an orca's dorsal fin called?
Saddle patch
The saddle patch is the grey marking behind the dorsal fin; its shape, together with nicks in the fin, lets researchers identify individual orcas from photographs.
Q 05Which technique has Antarctic orcas swimming side by side at an ice floe to knock a seal into the sea?
Wave-hunting
Wave-hunting, also called wave-washing, is right: Antarctic pack-ice orcas swim abreast toward a floe to raise a wave that washes the seal into the water, where other orcas wait.
Q 06Biogeographers use which term for a species like the orca whose range covers most of the Earth?
Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan: orcas live in every ocean from the Arctic to the Antarctic, though each population tends to specialise in local prey, from herring to seals.
Q 07Roughly how long is an orca pregnant before giving birth?
About 17 months
About 17 months: estimates run from 15 to 18 months, and because a mother usually bears a single calf only once every five years or so, each loss weighs heavily on a small group.
Q 08What IUCN Red List status has the orca, whose types may be separate species?
Data Deficient
Data Deficient: the orca was rated 'conservation dependent' until 2008, when the IUCN dropped the rating because lumping every type together could hide one that is endangered.
Q 09An orca's black back and white belly are thought to serve mainly as what?
Camouflage
Camouflage: seen from above, the dark back blends into deep water, and from below the pale belly blends with the bright surface, so prey may not see the orca coming.
Q 10A tagged sub-Antarctic orca feeding on toothfish was recorded diving closest to which depth?
1,000 meters (3,300 feet)
1,000 meters (3,300 feet) is closest: the whale reached 1,087 meters while raiding a fishing boat's toothfish catch, then made only shallow dives for about four hours after each such plunge.
Q 11Why did sailors give orcas the menacing common name 'killer whale'?
They saw them hunt larger whales
They saw them hunt larger whales: one theory holds that Basque whalers called them 'whale killers' and the words were swapped when the name passed into English.
Q 12Which naturalist gave the orca its first scientific name in 1758?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus named the orca in the 1758 edition of his Systema Naturae, the same edition in which he moved whales out of the fishes and into the mammals.
Q 13As of 2025, every confirmed fatal orca attack on a human has taken place where?
In captivity
Q 21A captive orca at a marine park learned to catch what by regurgitating fish as bait?
Seagulls
Seagulls: the orca spat fish onto the surface to lure the birds within reach, then ate them, and others in the tank soon copied the trick.
Q 22In short bursts, roughly how fast can an orca swim?
About 50 km/h
About 50 km/h: estimates of an orca's top burst run from 45 to 56 km/h, among the fastest of any marine mammal, yet it usually cruises at under 13 km/h.
Q 23Which feature of resident orca society is rare among mammals?
Both sexes stay with their mothers for life
In captivity: wild orcas have bitten or bumped a handful of people without killing anyone, while captive orcas have killed four people since the 1990s.
Q 14How tall is the dorsal fin of an adult male orca?
About 1.8 metres
About 1.8 metres, the height of a tall man: a bull's fin is more than twice a female's and stands straighter, so adult males can be told apart at a glance.
Q 15In the 1990s, some scientists blamed orcas for a population crash in which Aleutian Islands animal?
Sea otters
Sea otters: some researchers argued that orcas turned to otters after the seals they had been eating grew scarce, though the link was never directly proven.
Q 16Which salmon species dominates the diet of northeast Pacific resident orcas?
Chinook
Chinook is right: it makes up roughly two-thirds of the salmon these orcas eat, and the southern residents follow its runs along the coast year-round, while sockeye and pink are barely taken.
Q 17What is it called when Norwegian orcas herd herring into a tight ball near the surface?
Carousel feeding
Carousel feeding: once the ball is packed tight, the orcas slap it with their tail flukes and pick off the stunned herring one at a time.
Q 18Orcas kill great white sharks by flipping them onto their backs, inducing what paralysed state?
Tonic immobility
Tonic immobility: some orcas first ram a shark side-on to stun it, then roll it belly-up and hold it there until the motionless shark suffocates.
Q 19Since 2019, orcas off Western Australia have been recorded killing which giant animal?
Blue whales
Blue whales: researchers logged the first three known kills, one of them an adult about 20 metres long, so the largest animal ever to live fell to hunters less than half its length.
Q 20Off Península Valdés in Argentina, orcas do what to snatch sea lions in the shallows?
Beach themselves temporarily
Beach themselves temporarily, then wriggle back to sea; beaching is normally fatal to cetaceans and takes the young years of practice.
Both sexes stay with their mothers for life among resident orcas: males leave only briefly to mate with females from other pods and then return to their mother's matriline.
Q 24Which young orca turned up alone in Nootka Sound in 2001 and became famous for befriending boaters?
Luna
Luna, a southern resident calf, spent years seeking out people and boats; plans to reunite him with his family stalled, and a tugboat propeller killed him in 2006.
Q 25Orcas are among the very few animals that go through what?
Menopause
Menopause is right: female orcas stop breeding around age 40 yet can live decades longer, and these post-reproductive grandmothers lead their pods to salmon.
Q 26How old was the southern resident orca Granny (J2) estimated to be at her death?
105
105 is right: Granny (J2) was presumed dead in late 2016 with an estimated birth year of 1911, though a later biopsy-based study suggested she was only 65 to 80.
Q 27Which Roman writer described the orca as 'an enormous mass of flesh armed with teeth'?
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder also tells how an orca grounded itself in Ostia's harbour while gorging on spilled hides, and Emperor Claudius led soldiers out in boats to attack it.
Q 28A First Nation blocked the capture of a lone orca in Nootka Sound, believing it was whom reborn?
Their late chief
Their late chief: Ambrose Maquinna had told his people he would come back as a whale, the young orca appeared days after he died, and the band lured it away from the capture pen.
Q 29Since 2020, orcas off the Iberian coast have repeatedly damaged boats by targeting which part?
The rudder
The rudder is right: since 2020 Iberian orcas have rammed and bitten the rudders of yachts, disabling their steering and sinking several boats off Spain and Portugal.
Q 30Which orca was harpooned in 1964 as a model for a Vancouver Aquarium sculpture, yet survived to go on display?
Moby Doll
Moby Doll was taken for a female until the autopsy; he swam to Vancouver on the end of the harpoon line, lived about three months and never tried to attack his keepers.