Pig Trivia
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97 free Pig trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
41 free Pig trivia questions with answers. Pigs are the most underrated animal in trivia. They were domesticated twice, on opposite sides of Asia; they cannot sweat their way out of a hot day; and they have carried more of children's literature on their backs than any other farm animal. This quiz covers all of it. The first half is the real animal: teeth, tusks, snouts, wallowing, wild boar society, breeds, and where the world's pork actually comes from. The second half is the cultural pig, from the 1933 Disney short that named the three little pigs to the barn spider who saved one from the smokehouse, the Australian farm where Babe was shot, and the Muppet with the karate chop. Questions run from easy warm-ups a child can take to expert-level detail, and each one was written against an encyclopaedic or primary source with the sentence that establishes the answer attached. Good for a farm-themed quiz night, a classroom, or anyone who wants to win an argument about whether pigs sweat.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Disney's The Lion King, what kind of wild pig is Pumbaa?
Warthog
Warthog: Pumbaa the warthog and his meerkat friend Timon take in the exiled Simba and teach him to live on bugs under their motto, hakuna matata.
Q 02Pigs were domesticated independently in two parts of the world; which of these was one?
The Near East
The Near East: pigs were domesticated there and separately in East Asia, and the herds farmers took into Europe bred with wild boar so often that almost none of their Near Eastern ancestry survives.
Q 03A male pig's tusks are overgrown versions of which teeth?
Canines
Canines: a boar's tusks are canine teeth that never stop growing, and the upper and lower pairs grind against each other, which keeps them sharp.
Q 04The small bone inside the tip of a pig's snout is an adaptation for what?
Rooting in soil
Rooting in soil: the bone stiffens the snout's cartilage disc for digging, and the babirusa, whose snout bone is weak or missing, roots only in soft mud.
Q 05Pigs wallow in mud to cool off because they can barely do what?
Sweat
Sweat: a pig's few sweat glands do almost nothing to cool it, so evaporating mud does the work, and the coating may also guard against sunburn and parasites.
Q 06Which pig breed is unusual for its thick, woolly coat?
Mangalitsa
Mangalitsa: this Hungarian lard pig grows a curly fleece, and it nearly died out, with fewer than 200 left in Hungary around 1990 before breeders revived it.
Q 07Pigs aren't kosher: they have split hooves but don't do what?
Chew cud
Chew cud: Leviticus permits only animals that both have split hooves and chew the cud, and it singles out the pig as having the hooves without the chewing.
Q 08As of 2023, which country is the world's largest producer of pork?
China
China: about half of the world's pork is eaten there, most of it home-raised, and the government even keeps a strategic pork reserve to smooth out swings in price.
Q 09Roughly how many pigs are slaughtered for meat worldwide each year?
1.5 billion
About 1.5 billion pigs were slaughtered in 2023, and the total is fragile: it fell by more than 100 million in 2019 as African swine fever swept through herds in Asia.
Q 10Which meat overtook pork in 2016 as the world's most produced?
Poultry
Poultry passed pork in 2016 after decades in second place, and by 2023 the world produced about 142 million tonnes of it against 125 million of pork.
Q 11What is the two-part scientific name of the wild boar, ancestor of the domestic pig?
Sus scrofa
Sus scrofa: scrofa is Latin for a breeding sow, and it also gave medicine the word scrofula, literally 'little pigs', for a swelling of the glands in the neck.
Q 12In Homer's Odyssey, which enchantress turns Odysseus's crew into pigs?
Circe
Circe drugs the crew's wine and turns them into pigs with a stroke of her wand, leaving their minds human, until Odysseus, protected by a herb from Hermes, makes her change them back.
Q 13Across most of its Eurasian range, which predator is the wild boar's main hunter?
The wolf
The wolf is the wild boar's main predator across most of Eurasia, but in the forests of the Russian Far East the tiger takes over, with boar among its chief prey.
Q 21In The Three Little Pigs, how does the villain finally try to get in?
Chimney
Chimney: down he comes, straight into a pot of boiling water, and in Joseph Jacobs's 1890 telling the pig then cooks him and eats him for supper.
Q 22Which band flew a giant inflatable pig over London's Battersea Power Station for a 1977 album cover?
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd flew it for the cover of Animals; the rope broke during the shoot and the pig drifted up into the flight path of Heathrow Airport.
Q 23Who wrote Charlotte's Web, published in 1952?
E. B. White
E. B. White raised pigs on his own farm, and four years earlier had published 'Death of a Pig', an essay about a sick one he sat up with for nights and could not save.
Q 14How is wild boar society organised?
In matriarchal groups
In matriarchal groups: a sounder is made up of related sows and their young, led by an old female, while young males leave and come back only for the mating season.
Q 15Which country has banned the use of pigs to hunt truffles?
Italy
Italy outlawed truffle pigs because their digging tears up the underground threads the fungus grows from; trained dogs, often the curly-coated Lagotto Romagnolo, now do the sniffing.
Q 16Which breed became a short-lived American pet craze in the late 1980s?
The pot-bellied pig
The pot-bellied pig reached the United States in the mid-1980s, originally bound for zoos, and became a pet craze that faded as buyers watched their piglets grow far bigger than promised.
Q 17Which position does the Pig hold in the cycle of the Chinese zodiac?
Twelfth
Twelfth and last: in the legend of the Jade Emperor's great race the Pig is the final animal to arrive, and in one telling it had stopped along the way for a meal and a nap.
Q 18Each Year of the Pig comes in one of five types, named after what?
The Chinese elements
The Chinese elements: Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth take turns, so a given pairing, such as the Earth Pig of 2019, comes round only once every sixty years.
Q 19The piggy bank's popularity in the West is often traced to which country, where pigs symbolise good luck?
Germany
Germany, where a Glücksschwein, or lucky pig, is a good-luck charm: the country's oldest known piggy bank, a medieval clay pig found in Thuringia, turned out to hold no coins.
Q 20Terracotta money boxes shaped like wild boar were made in the Majapahit empire on which island?
Java
Java: the Majapahit boars are thought to have held Chinese copper coins, and the Javanese word for a piggy bank, celengan, comes from celeng, a wild boar.
Q 24In Charlotte's Web, what is the name of the pig that Charlotte the spider saves?
Wilbur
Wilbur is a spring pig being fattened for slaughter until Charlotte, the spider living above his pen, promises to save his life, and does.
Q 25In Charlotte's Web, which two words does the spider weave first?
Some Pig
'Some Pig' comes first; Terrific, Radiant and Humble follow, and the crowds they draw to the barn make the pig too famous to slaughter.
Q 26In Charlotte's Web, why does Fern's father plan to kill the newborn piglet?
He is a runt
He is a runt, the weakling of the litter, and not thought worth raising; Fern talks her father out of it and feeds the piglet from a bottle herself.
Q 27The 1995 film Babe was adapted from which novel?
The Sheep-Pig
The Sheep-Pig came out in 1983; its author, Dick King-Smith, had farmed for twenty years before he turned to children's books in his fifties.
Q 28In which country was the 1995 film Babe shot?
Australia
Australia: it was shot in the green dairy country around Robertson, New South Wales, and in 2025 the town painted its giant roadside landmark as a pink pig to mark the film's 30th anniversary.
Q 29The film Babe won its only Oscar for Best what?
Visual Effects
Visual Effects: its talking farm animals beat Apollo 13 to the award, the one win from seven nominations that included Best Picture.
Q 30George Miller directed the 1998 sequel to Babe under which title?
Babe: Pig in the City
Babe: Pig in the City cost at least $80 million to make and took about $69 million worldwide, a costly flop after the hit original.