Pugs
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46 free Pugs trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Pugs were bred to do nothing but keep people company, and they have been doing it for roughly a thousand years, from the imperial courts of Song-dynasty China to the laps of Dutch princes, English queens and Hollywood agents. Behind the flat face and curled tail is an unusually well-documented history involving the Dutch East India Company, a dog that foiled an assassination, a Napoleonic prison courier and a secret society of Catholic Freemasons named after the breed. These 46 questions cover the breed standard, from 'rose' and 'button' ears to the Latin motto multum in parvo; the ancient Lo-Sze and the Happa dogs looted from the Old Summer Palace; Hogarth's Trump, Josephine's Fortune and Queen Victoria's Olga, Pedro and Venus; the Morrison and Willoughby lines; the only Pug to win Westminster; and the 'retro pug' counter-trend. There are health questions too, on brachycephaly, life expectancy and the inbreeding study, plus pop-culture stops at Mansfield Park, EastEnders, Dune and Men in Black. Every answer is cited to the page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or share it with a pug person.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01From which country were Pugs brought to Europe in the sixteenth century?
China
China had a taste for flat-faced dogs and bred several, the Pekingese among them; the Pug is the one that traders carried west.
Q 02Which two colours are Pug coats most often?
Fawn or black
Apricot fawn and silver fawn are also recognised shades.
Q 03What shape does a Pug's tail normally take?
Curled over the hip
Curled over the hip as tightly as possible is what show judges look for, and both the British and American standards rate a double curl as the ideal.
Q 04How does the American Kennel Club's breed standard describe the Pug's personality?
Even-tempered and charming
Even-tempered and charming is only half of it: the same sentence of the standard asks for playfulness and dignity together, and the British standard wants dignity too.
Q 05The Pug's Latin motto, multum in parvo, translates as what?
Much in little
Much in little is the standard's demand for a lot of dog in a small space: judges want compact form and hard muscle, and fault a lean, leggy Pug as much as a long, low one.
Q 06Which pet monkey is one theory for the origin of the name 'Pug'?
Marmoset
Marmoset monkeys were fashionable pets known as pugs, and dictionaries date that monkey sense of the word decades before the dog sense, so the flat-faced dog may simply have borrowed the name.
Q 07The theory that 'Pug' comes from Latin pugnus links the breed's head to what shape?
A closed fist
A closed fist is the traditional guess, which a Victorian dog writer stated as beyond doubt; modern dictionaries are less sure and list the word's origin as unknown.
Q 08What are the two recognised Pug ear shapes?
Rose and button
Rose and button ears only became a question once cropping stopped: early Pugs had their ears cut off close to the head, and today's judges prefer the forward-folding button.
Q 09What colour does the breed standard require a Pug's nails to be?
Black
Black nails were essential even in 1894, when a show writer complained that judges kept overlooking them; the standard's wording on the point has not changed since.
Q 10What dental trait is normal in Pugs?
An under-bite
An under-bite, with the lower teeth just ahead of the upper, is what show judges expect; the jaw is so short that a full set of teeth has to crowd in crooked.
Q 11Pug breeders are said to have prized forehead wrinkles that formed the written character for which word?
Prince
Prince: three creases crossed by an upright one make the character, and legend has it that early breeders deepened the wrinkles on purpose to get it.
Q 12What is a group of Pugs called?
A grumble
A grumble fits the snorts and mutters, and it echoes the breed's German name, Mops, which dictionaries link, one only tentatively, to a verb meaning to grumble.
Q 13Which trading company is credited with carrying the first Pugs to Europe?
Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company's ships get the credit, which is why the English first knew the breed as the Dutch pug or Dutch mastiff and took Holland for its home.
Q 21Which English painter's 1745 self-portrait includes his Pug, Trump?
William Hogarth
William Hogarth, a combative man, identified so closely with his pet that a 1753 caricature by Paul Sandby drew the painter himself as a Pug.
Q 22Whose Pug, Fortune, smuggled notes out of a French Revolutionary prison before she became an empress?
Josephine Bonaparte
Josephine Bonaparte, not yet married to Napoleon, was held at Les Carmes, where the dog was her only permitted visitor; her notes went out tucked under his collar.
Q 23Which Pug colours did Queen Victoria favour?
Apricot and fawn
Q 14How did a new wave of Pugs reach Britain in 1860?
Looted from a palace by soldiers
Looted from a palace by soldiers: British troops sacked an imperial palace and took its lapdogs home, where two of them, Lamb and Moss, became parents of the era's most influential Pug stud.
Q 15In which Asian region did Buddhist monks keep Pugs in their monasteries?
Tibet
Tibet's monks kept them as monastery pets; at the imperial court they lived better still, with soldiers posted to guard them.
Q 16Of which royal dynasty did the Pug reportedly become the official dog in 1572?
House of Orange
The House of Orange is said to have taken up the breed after a Pug's barking warned one of its princes that attackers were closing on his camp; tellings differ on which William it was.
Q 17Which Disney film features Percy, a governor's pampered Pug who ends up befriending a raccoon?
Pocahontas
Pocahontas gives Governor Ratcliffe a spoiled Pug; Percy starts out feuding with Meeko the raccoon and ends the film by walking out on his master to stay with his old enemy.
Q 18A Pug travelled with which royal couple when they took the English throne in 1688?
William III and Mary II
William III and Mary II arrived from Holland with their Pugs in tow, and soon after their accession the snub-nosed newcomer was the height of fashion in England.
Q 19The French call the Pug a carlin, probably after a stage star famous for playing which masked character?
Harlequin
Harlequin wears a black mask, and an actor nicknamed Carlin was so popular in the part that the black-masked little dog is thought to have been named in his honour.
Q 20Which Spanish painter posed a marchioness with her beribboned Pug in a portrait of the 1780s?
Goya
Goya gave the Marquesa de Pontejos a Pug at her feet, decked in ribbons and bells and standing as stiff and doll-like as its mistress; a Pug in the picture was a badge of rank.
Apricot and fawn were her choice; Queen Victoria bred her many Pugs herself and passed the passion on to her family, which helped make the breed a fixture of fashionable Victorian homes.
Q 24Which 1980s family film follows a Pug puppy searching for his best friend, a kitten swept down a river?
Milo and Otis
The Adventures of Milo and Otis was shot in Japan with real animals, and its English version has one human voice: Dudley Moore narrates and speaks for both the kitten and the Pug.
Q 25Why are a Pug's large eyes unusually easy to injure?
Their sockets are very shallow
Their sockets are very shallow, a side effect of the short skull, so the eyes sit proud of the lids' protection; vets warn that a knock can scratch one or even pop it out of place.
Q 26Which Pugs did Lady Brassey, a round-the-world yachtswoman, first put in English show rings in 1886?
Black Pugs
Black Pugs from her kennel soon became the fashion; she is said to have brought them home from the East aboard her yacht, the Sunbeam, though nobody at the time could confirm it.
Q 27With which breed were Pugs reportedly crossed in the 19th century to broaden the head?
English Bulldog
The English Bulldog cross did widen the skull and shorten the face, but a Victorian judge complained that the offspring came out splay-footed and, worst of all, savage in temper.
Q 28In which show group do both the American and British kennel clubs place the Pug?
Toy
Toy, though it is the heavyweight of the group: the Kennel Club calls the Pug the most substantial of the Toy breeds, and both standards allow it up to 18 pounds (8.1 kg).
Q 29What does the Pug breed standard call the dark spot prized on the forehead?
A thumb mark
A thumb mark, or diamond, should be as black as possible, like the cheek moles and the trace, a dark line down the back; Victorian judges gave the trace alone five points in a hundred.
Q 30Which Italian fashion designer named a clothing line after his Pug, Oliver?
Valentino Garavani
Valentino Garavani kept six Pugs and called a second clothing line Oliver after one of them; when he flew by private jet, five of the dogs rode to the airport in a vehicle of their own.