Pythons
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50 free Pythons trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Pythons are the snakes most people picture when they think of a giant constrictor: patient ambush hunters with no venom at all, relying on muscle, camouflage and some remarkable senses. The family runs from heavyweights that can swallow a deer to species that stay under a metre long. This quiz gathers the fun facts people actually look for. It covers how pythons find and kill their prey, what happens inside their bodies after a feast, how the mothers care for a clutch, and which species hold the records. There are questions on the pythons running wild in the Everglades, on the pet trade, and on the snakes' place in myth, music, folklore and film. It is written for curious readers, students, teachers and reptile keepers alike. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can check a fact, settle an argument or simply learn something strange about one of the world's most impressive reptiles.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Long thought to suffocate its prey, a python's squeeze is now known to kill mainly by causing what?
Cardiac arrest
Cardiac arrest comes quickly because the tightening coils stop blood reaching the heart and other vital organs, so even the giant species do not crush their prey to death.
Q 02The reticulated python of Southeast Asia holds which record among all the world's living snakes?
Longest
Longest is its title, with wild adults occasionally stretching past 6 metres, yet two bulkier species of snake still outweigh it.
Q 03The ball python, a hugely popular pet snake, earned its name by doing what when frightened?
Curling up tightly
Curling up tightly with its head tucked in the middle is its defence instead of biting, which is one reason the species is so easy for people to handle.
Q 04Which giant Asian pet-trade snake has overrun the Everglades and devastated its mammals?
Burmese python
Burmese pythons were officially recognised as a breeding population in South Florida in 2000, and the United States banned further imports in 2012.
Q 05Which pop star danced with a live albino python on her shoulders at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards?
Britney Spears
Britney Spears also shared the stage with a white tiger that night, performing I'm a Slave 4 U at New York's Metropolitan Opera House.
Q 06What do the pits lining a python's lips detect, helping it find prey in complete darkness?
Body heat
Body heat reaches the pits as infrared radiation, so a python can pick out a warm-blooded animal on a moonless night without seeing it.
Q 07The tiny claw-like spurs beside a python's vent are the evolutionary leftovers of which body parts?
Hind legs
Hind legs shrank away in the ancestors of snakes, but male pythons still move the leftover spurs to grip and stimulate females during courtship.
Q 08Which python is Mowgli's ally in Kipling's The Jungle Book, though Disney's film makes him a villain?
Kaa
Kaa helps rescue Mowgli from the monkeys in Kipling's tale, hypnotising them toward his jaws, whereas Disney's version tries to eat the boy.
Q 09Which Greek archer god killed the monstrous serpent Python and claimed the oracle it guarded?
Apollo
Apollo shot the serpent with his arrows, and in 1803 the zoologist François Daudin borrowed the monster's name for the real snakes.
Q 10What event causes the main chamber of a python's heart to grow about 40 percent heavier?
Eating a large meal
Eating a large meal sends a python's oxygen use soaring to as much as 40 times its resting rate, and the heart enlarges to fuel the work of digestion.
Q 11Road surveys found sightings of which Everglades mammal down 99.3 percent after pythons spread?
Raccoons
Raccoons all but vanished from the survey routes, and marsh rabbits released in the park as a test were wiped out by pythons in under 11 months.
Q 12Which 1992 hurricane wrecked a python breeding facility, loosing snakes into the Everglades?
Andrew
Andrew set many captive snakes free, yet research suggests the wild population more likely grew from a small number of released pets.
Q 13Which water-loving giant outweighs every python, making it the heaviest snake species alive?
Green anaconda
The green anaconda is so thickset that a 5.2-metre individual carries about the same bulk as a 7.4-metre reticulated python.
Q 21Australia's pygmy python, the smallest member of the python family, is often found living inside what?
Termite mounds
Termite mounds give the snake its other name, the anthill python, and adults grow to only about 50 centimetres in length.
Q 22The pygmy python's scientific name honours which Australian city, far outside the snake's actual range?
Perth
Perth was wrongly assumed to be where the first specimen was collected, but the snake actually lives far away in the north-west of Western Australia.
Q 23Which snake of New Guinea's rainforests hatches bright yellow or red, then changes colour as it grows?
Green tree python
The green tree python can switch colour in just 5 to 10 days at about a year old, and it rests looped over branches like the unrelated emerald tree boa.
Q 14In which part of the world do boa constrictors live wild, with no native pythons at all?
South America
South America has boas instead, because wild pythons are native only to Africa, Asia and Australia, apart from escaped or released pets.
Q 15How does a brooding mother python, a cold-blooded reptile, warm the eggs held in her coils?
Shivering her muscles
Shivering her muscles makes enough warmth to hold the clutch at a steady temperature, and she does not feed at all until the eggs hatch.
Q 16Unusually for a snake, the Central African rock python mother does what for up to two weeks after hatching?
Guards her young
She guards her young from predators, having first coiled around as many as 100 eggs for about 90 days in an old burrow or cave.
Q 17Baby pythons slice their way out of the shell at hatching using which temporary tool?
An egg tooth
An egg tooth does the cutting, yet the hatchlings often stay inside the opened shell until they are ready for their first shed of skin.
Q 18What is the term for the virgin birth by which captive female pythons have produced young without mating?
Parthenogenesis
Parthenogenesis was confirmed in a pet ball python by comparing the mother's genes with those of her embryos, which had no father.
Q 19Pet pythons, like other reptiles, can pass which bacterial infection to the people who handle them?
Salmonella
Salmonella can reach people through a python's droppings, open wounds or contaminated water, although the snakes carry no venom at all.
Q 20Australia's Children's python, a small and popular pet, takes its misleading name from what?
A museum curator
A museum curator called John George Children, of the British Museum, was honoured in 1842 by the zoologist he had mentored, John Edward Gray.
Q 24Southeast Asia's short, stocky blood python owes its dramatic common name to what?
Its red colouring
Its red colouring runs from rich, bright red to a dull rust, and the snake's heavy build means it generally looks overweight.
Q 25The reticulated python's name comes from a Latin word comparing its complex skin pattern to what?
A net
A net is what the Latin reticulatus describes, and among shadowy jungle leaf litter the busy pattern makes the huge snake virtually disappear.
Q 26A python in Borneo, measured at nearly 7 metres, was caught after swallowing which radio-collared animal?
A sun bear
A sun bear weighing 23 kg was the reticulated python's catch, and the snake needed some 10 weeks to digest it.
Q 27On which Indonesian island have most confirmed cases of pythons swallowing people occurred?
Sulawesi
Sulawesi saw the first fully confirmed case in 2017, when a missing farmer was found inside a 7-metre python the day after he vanished.
Q 28What was the name of the Kansas City python measured at over 25 feet for Guinness in 2011?
Medusa
Medusa, a reticulated python, weighed about 350 pounds and was recognised by Guinness as the lengthiest snake ever kept in captivity.
Q 29Escaped pet pythons, many of them albino, have formed a wild population on which Caribbean island?
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico has recorded reticulated pythons since 2009, and the population's unusually high rate of albinism points to pet stock as its origin.
Q 30What do breeders call the thousands of designer colour patterns created in captive ball pythons?
Morphs
Morphs are patterns that never occur in the wild, and rare new ones have sold for several thousand dollars each.