Pufferfish
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50 free Pufferfish trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Puffer fish look harmless: small, slow and a little goofy. Then something frightens one and it swells into a spiky ball, and that is only the first surprise. Few animals pack so many fun facts into such a small body, from a poison with no antidote to courtship displays that puzzled divers for years. This quiz covers how pufferfish inflate, where their poison comes from, what they eat and what dares to eat them, the strict rules around serving them in Japan, their odd relatives, and their starring roles in cartoons, films and video games. It is written for curious kids, families, teachers and anyone who likes animal trivia. Every question comes with a short explanation, so you pick up a new fact whether you get it right or wrong.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which extremely stretchy body part does a pufferfish fill with water to swell into a ball?
Its stomach
Its stomach is so elastic that a pufferfish can gulp enough water to become several times its normal size. Lifted out of the sea, it gulps air instead.
Q 02What do male white-spotted pufferfish off Japan spend about a week sculpting on the seabed to attract a mate?
A sand circle
A sand circle about two metres wide, with ridges and a maze-like centre, is the male's courtship display. He is only about 10 cm long and never uses the same one twice.
Q 03Pufferfish poison is often said to be up to 1,200 times more deadly than which infamous poison?
Cyanide
Cyanide is the usual yardstick, and the toxin in a pufferfish leaves it far behind. Doctors have no antidote: they can only keep a victim breathing until it wears off.
Q 04Which sea mammals have been filmed gently passing a pufferfish around, apparently to get a buzz from its toxin?
Dolphins
Dolphins were filmed handling a pufferfish with great care and sharing it among the group, then seeming to drift in a trance-like state.
Q 05What does Mrs. Puff, the pufferfish in SpongeBob SquarePants, teach at her school in Bikini Bottom?
Boating
Boating is her subject, and SpongeBob keeps failing her driving test. She inflates like a car's airbag whenever he crashes.
Q 06Which Simpsons character is told he has a day to live after eating pufferfish at a sushi restaurant?
Homer
Homer gets the bad news in a season two episode after an apprentice chef slices the fish. He spends the day working through a list of last wishes, then wakes up alive.
Q 07Which animated film features Bloat, a pufferfish who lives in a dentist's fish tank in Sydney?
Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo makes Bloat a member of the Tank Gang, the aquarium fish who help the young clownfish plan his escape. Brad Garrett provides the voice.
Q 08Pufferfish poison was famously claimed to be an ingredient in Haitian powders said to turn people into what?
Zombies
Zombies were the claim: a Harvard researcher argued in the 1980s that the toxin could leave a victim paralysed yet alive. Later lab tests found little or none of it in the powders.
Q 09A pufferfish's teeth are fused together into what tough structure, used to crack open clams and mussels?
A beak
A beak is the result, and in a fish tank it can grow too long. Keepers of pet puffers feed them shelled foods such as snails to keep it worn down.
Q 10What is the Japanese name for pufferfish, a pricey delicacy that only specially licensed chefs may prepare?
Fugu
Fugu chefs in Japan have needed a licence since 1958. They earn it through an apprenticeship of two or three years and an exam that most applicants fail.
Q 11The scientific name of the pufferfish family comes from ancient Greek words that mean what?
Four teeth
Four teeth is the meaning: each jaw carries two tooth plates joined along a seam down the middle, so a puffer seems to have two above and two below.
Q 12Which pufferfish organ, prized for its flavour, has been banned from restaurant menus across Japan since 1984?
The liver
The liver is thought to be the tastiest part of the fish and is also the most poisonous. Saga Prefecture has asked to serve liver from its poison-free farmed fish, and food-safety officials have said no.
Q 13What was the profession of Bandō Mitsugorō VIII, a Living National Treasure killed by pufferfish in 1975?
Kabuki actor
Q 21Which pair of body parts can a pufferfish move independently, each one pointing in a different direction?
Its eyes
Its eyes swivel separately, much like a chameleon's, letting the fish watch for danger on both sides at once. Many puffers can also change the strength of their colours.
Q 22Which bones are missing from a pufferfish's skeleton, leaving its body free to balloon outwards?
Ribs
Ribs would get in the way of inflating, so puffers have none. They also lack a pelvis and the pair of pelvic fins found on most fish.
Q 23Biologists think pufferfish evolved their famous inflating trick to make up for being poor at what?
Swimming fast
Kabuki actor Bandō claimed he could resist the poison and ordered several portions of the most toxic organ at a Kyoto restaurant. He died about eight hours later.
Q 14Which British explorer fell ill in 1774 after tasting a fish thought to be a pufferfish in New Caledonia?
James Cook
James Cook and two naturalists on his second voyage ate only a little, because they had spent so long drawing the fish. All three fell ill, and all recovered.
Q 15Pufferfish do not make their own poison: which tiny organisms in their food are thought to produce it?
Bacteria
Bacteria living in the animals a puffer eats are the likely source. That is why farmed fish raised on a controlled diet can be completely free of poison.
Q 16What is the name of the powerful nerve poison found in most pufferfish, for which there is no known antidote?
Tetrodotoxin
Tetrodotoxin is named after the order of fish that puffers belong to, and a Japanese scientist first isolated it in 1909. Chemists usually shorten it to TTX.
Q 17Which sea creature, small enough to sit in a hand, delivers the same deadly nerve toxin as pufferfish in its bite?
Blue-ringed octopus
Blue-ringed octopus venom was given a name of its own until chemists showed in 1978 that it was the puffer's poison. It was the first animal found to use that poison as a venom.
Q 18Which huge, flat-bodied sea fish, able to weigh over a tonne, is a close relative of the pufferfish?
Ocean sunfish
Ocean sunfish belong to the same order, and their newly hatched young look like tiny spiky puffers. A female can release up to 300 million eggs at a time.
Q 19The Mbu, a giant pufferfish that can grow more than two feet long, lives in which African river?
Congo
Congo River waters are home to the Mbu, one of about 35 puffer species that never go to sea. It can reach 67 cm, so very few home aquariums are big enough for one.
Q 20Which vegetable gives its name to the dwarf pufferfish, a popular aquarium pet barely an inch long?
Pea
Pea puffers reach only about 3.5 cm and, unlike most of their relatives, live in large groups in the wild. They come from the rivers of south-west India.
Swimming fast is beyond them: a puffer paddles along with its small fins, which makes it nimble yet slow, and an easy target for anything quicker.
Q 24Which famous sea predators are among the few animals that can eat a toxic pufferfish and usually survive?
Sharks
Sharks, along with lizardfish, routinely eat puffers because the poison is far less harmful to them than it is to people.
Q 25The toxic silver-cheeked toadfish, a pufferfish, invaded the Mediterranean Sea through which waterway?
Suez Canal
Suez Canal waters let the fish swim north from the Red Sea, and it has since spread as far as Malta and the Adriatic. Deaths from eating it have been reported in Egypt, Israel and Turkey.
Q 26In 2002 a Japanese pufferfish became the first vertebrate after which species to have its genome published?
Humans
Humans came first, then the puffer, picked because its genome is among the smallest of any animal with a backbone. With far less filler between them, its genes were easier to spot.
Q 27Which big cat gives its name to the most prized and most poisonous pufferfish served in Japanese restaurants?
Tiger
Tiger puffers are so valuable that they have been overfished, and the species is now listed as Near Threatened. Most of those on the menu are raised on farms.
Q 28Which Japanese figure is said to be forbidden, by a centuries-old ban, from ever eating pufferfish?
The emperor
The emperor has never eaten the dish, according to a Tokyo pufferfish chef. Everyone else in Japan may, provided a licensed chef has removed the poisonous parts.
Q 29The Chinese characters used to write pufferfish literally mean river plus which farm animal?
Pig
Pig completes the name, making the fish a river pig. It was already prized in Song-dynasty China as one of the three delicacies of the Yangtze.
Q 30In Japan, the dried and inflated bodies of pufferfish are traditionally made into which decorative objects?
Lanterns
Lanterns can be made from the preserved bodies, and a giant lantern shaped like the fish was the landmark sign of Zubora-ya, a restaurant in Osaka's Shinsekai district.