50 free Safari trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free safari trivia questions with answers. A safari is a journey, literally: the Swahili word reached English in the 1850s by way of the explorer Richard Burton. This quiz is a journey through everything the word now covers, from the parks (Serengeti and the Masai Mara, Kruger, the Okavango Delta, Ngorongoro Crater, Etosha) to the animals you go to see (the Big Five and why hunters named them that, cheetahs and their tear streaks, hippos and their 'blood sweat', elephants, giraffes, zebras, wild dogs, hyenas and meerkats), plus a little safari history: Roosevelt's 11,000 specimens, Hemingway, and the man-eaters of Tsavo. The early questions are for anyone who has watched a nature documentary; the later ones will test people who have actually been in the Land Cruiser: which country's rains flood the Okavango, how old the oldest baobab was, and what percentage of wild-dog chases end in a kill. Good for a pre-trip quiz night, a classroom geography unit or a zoo fundraiser. Every answer was checked against the relevant Wikipedia article and each question shows its source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Via which explorer did 'safari', from Swahili for 'journey', enter English in the 1850s?
Richard Francis Burton
The Swahili word itself comes from the Arabic 'safar', to journey.
Q 02Which five animals make up the safari 'Big Five'?
Lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, buffalo
The list has nothing to do with size or beauty; it was drawn up by hunters.
Q 03Why were the Big Five given that name?
They were the hardest animals to hunt on foot
The term was coined by big-game hunters and later adopted wholesale by the tourist industry.
Q 04The Serengeti's name is believed to derive from a Maasai word usually interpreted as meaning what?
Endless plains
The disputed root is 'seringit'; the neighbouring Masai Mara takes 'Mara' from the Maa word for 'spotted', after the bushy trees dotting it.
Q 05Roughly how many wildebeest take part in the Serengeti-Mara Great Migration each year?
1.7 million
They are joined by about 260,000 zebras and hundreds of thousands of gazelles, and around 250,000 wildebeest die along the way.
Q 06Kruger National Park became South Africa's first national park in which year?
1926
It began as a game reserve in 1898 under President Paul Kruger and now forms part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park with Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Q 07Kruger has more species of large mammal than any other African game reserve. How many?
147
All of the Big Five are there, but rhino poaching is severe: more than 520 were killed in the park in 2013 alone.
Q 08The Okavango Delta in Botswana is unusual among deltas because its river does what?
Never reaches the sea
The Okavango spills into a tectonic trough in the Kalahari and mostly evaporates; in 2014 it became the 1,000th UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Q 09The Okavango's annual flood originates from summer rains in the highlands of which country?
Angola
The surge travels about 1,200 km in roughly a month, then spreads across the delta between March and June.
Q 10Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania holds what geological distinction?
World's largest intact, unfilled volcanic caldera
It formed when a large volcano erupted and collapsed on itself two to three million years ago; the floor covers about 260 square kilometres.
Q 11Which famous Leakey family hominin site lies within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area?
Olduvai Gorge
Homo habilis remains were among the discoveries; the area became a UNESCO site in 1979.
Q 12Etosha, in Namibia, is described as the world's most important custodian of which animal?
The black rhino
Its name means 'Great White Place' in Oshindonga, after the vast salt pan that makes up nearly a quarter of the park.
Q 13Etosha was first proclaimed a game reserve in 1907 under which colonial administration?
German South-West Africa
Governor Friedrich von Lindequist signed Ordinance 88; national park status came in 1967.
Q 21Why is a giraffe's 45 cm tongue thought to be black?
To protect it against sunburn
The horn-like structures on its head are called ossicones and both sexes have them.
Q 22The African bush elephant's gestation period, the longest of any mammal, lasts about how long?
22 months
Both sexes have tusks that keep growing for life; the species has been listed as Endangered since 2021.
Q 23How many finger-like tips does an African elephant's trunk end in?
Two
Asian elephants have only one; the big ears help shed body heat.
Q 14In which year was Kenya's Masai Mara reserve originally established as a wildlife sanctuary?
1961
It covers 1,510 square kilometres in Narok County; the wildebeest usually cross the Mara River from Tanzania around July.
Q 15Roughly how fast can the fastest land animal, an African big cat, run?
93 to 104 km/h
Unlike other cats its claws are only partly retractile, and it mostly hunts by day.
Q 16The dark 'tear streaks' running from the eyes to the mouth are unique to which safari cat?
Cheetah
As of 2022 only about a dozen of the Asiatic subspecies survived, in Iran.
Q 17What are the closest living relatives of the hippopotamus?
Whales and dolphins
They diverged about 55 million years ago; the name is Greek for 'river horse'.
Q 18The red secretion on a hippo's skin, nicknamed 'blood sweat', actually functions as what?
A natural sunscreen
It is neither blood nor sweat, and it is debated whether hippos can swim at all: they walk or bounce along the bottom.
Q 19A feral population of hippos in South America descends from animals kept by which man?
Pablo Escobar
They escaped from his Colombian estate after his death in 1993 and have multiplied in the Magdalena river basin.
Q 20How tall does a fully grown giraffe stand?
4.3 to 5.7 metres
Its 11 kg heart has to generate roughly double the blood pressure a human needs.
Q 24Which hypothesis for zebra stripes is most strongly supported by the evidence?
They deter biting flies
Each zebra's pattern is unique and heritable, and beneath the coat the skin is black.
Q 25The last captive quagga died in which city's zoo in 1883?
Amsterdam
There are three living zebra species: plains, mountain and Grévy's, the last being the largest wild equid.
Q 26The name 'wildebeest' comes from which language, meaning 'wild beast'?
Dutch
Also called gnu, calves are on their feet within minutes of birth and moving with the herd soon after.
Q 27Spotted hyena society is unusual among mammals for what reason?
Females are larger and dominate the males
Despite the scavenger reputation, hunting supplies at least half and up to 98 percent of their diet.
Q 28Hyenas belong to the suborder Feliformia; they are closer to which animals than to dogs?
Cats and mongooses
A pack of spotted hyenas will usually beat lionesses off a kill if they outnumber them four to one and no male lion is present.
Q 29A group of lions, the most social of wild cats, is called what?
A pride
They are inactive for about twenty hours a day, and the females usually hunt together.
Q 30Outside Africa, wild lions survive only in and around which Indian national park?
Gir
African populations fell by about 43 percent from the early 1990s, and the species has been Vulnerable since 1996.