Savanna Trivia
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48 free Savanna trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The savanna biome, a mixed grassland dotted with trees, covers around a fifth of the Earth's land, from the plains of East Africa to central Brazil, northern Australia and the Llanos of Venezuela. This quiz takes in all of it: how the biome is defined, where the word came from, the wet-and-dry climate that shapes it, the role of fire, and the plants and animals that make it famous, including elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, hyenas, wildebeest, termites and baobabs. Easy questions ask which continent the Serengeti is on and which is the fastest land animal; harder ones cover the Cerrado's share of Brazil, why the Sahel is named for a shore, and the mysterious tree that flowers for only 15 hours. It suits students of geography and biology, safari-goers, and quiz nights that want a nature round with real teeth. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the savanna biome, its regions and its species, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which pack-hunting savanna carnivore is also known as the painted wolf?
African wild dog
African wild dog: the pack that hunts together also looks after its own, sharing food with members too weak, sick or injured to hunt.
Q 02Savannas mostly form a transition belt between which two biomes?
Rainforest and desert
Rainforest and desert: savanna grows where too little rain falls for closed forest but enough for grass and scattered trees, which is why it rings the tropical forests on both sides of the equator.
Q 03'Savanna' reached English via Spanish from which Caribbean language?
Taíno
Taíno speakers met the first Spanish ships in the Caribbean, and the sailors carried home their words for things Europe had no names for, hurricane and hammock among them.
Q 04Which savanna cat routinely drags its kills up into trees?
Leopard
Leopard: on the ground it would lose the carcass to lions or hyenas, which are bigger or come in packs, so it hauls the kill into the branches and returns to feed in safety.
Q 05Dry-season fires sweep through savannas again and again; how do they stop forest taking over?
By killing tree seedlings
By killing tree seedlings: the flames stay in the grass layer, so thick-barked adult trees survive and the grass resprouts from deep roots, but few saplings live long enough to close the canopy.
Q 06Which nocturnal savanna mammal rips open termite mounds with its claws and laps up the insects?
Aardvark
Aardvark: its Afrikaans name means 'earth pig', and it keeps digging fresh burrows, so the ones it abandons become ready-made dens for many other animals.
Q 07Which animal of South America's Llanos grasslands is the world's largest rodent?
Capybara
Capybara: with slightly webbed feet it is as much at home in water as on grass, which suits plains that lie under water for months each year, and it can stay under for five minutes to hide from predators.
Q 08Which African bird rides on rhinos and zebras, picking ticks from their hides?
Oxpecker
Oxpecker: it eats the ticks on its host's hide, but researchers have argued over whether it is a helpful cleaner or a parasite that also feeds on the animal's blood.
Q 09Regular Indigenous burning is credited with the savannas of tropical Australia and which neighbouring island?
New Guinea
New Guinea: its southern lowlands hold savanna much like northern Australia's, and villagers there still set it alight at the end of each dry season.
Q 10Which tree dominates the canopy of Australia's tropical savannas?
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus: many species keep spare buds protected under their bark, so after a grass fire has scorched the trunk the tree simply sprouts new leaves and branches.
Q 11The Cerrado, a vast tropical savanna, spreads across the central plateau of which country?
Brazil
Brazil: the Cerrado has become the country's soy and cattle heartland, and that farming boom has cleared much of its native vegetation.
Q 12The Llanos, a vast tropical grassland east of the Andes, straddles Venezuela and which other country?
Colombia
Colombia shares the Llanos with Venezuela: one grassland that the rains turn into a seasonal wetland and the dry months turn back into cattle range, worked since Spanish colonial days.
Q 13The Serengeti spans southwestern Kenya and which country, home to most of its protected area?
Tanzania
Tanzania holds the bulk of the Serengeti, including the national park, which meets Kenya's Maasai Mara reserve at the border, so the migrating herds walk from one country into the other.
Q 21In 2021 the IUCN split Africa's elephants into savanna and which other species?
Forest elephant
Forest elephant: genetic evidence persuaded experts that the smaller of the two is a species of its own, and judged alone it proved Critically Endangered, a step worse than its savanna cousin.
Q 22What are an African elephant's huge ears mainly for?
Shedding heat
Shedding heat: flapping moves air over large blood vessels on the inner side and cools the blood, and African elephants have far bigger ears than their Asian relatives.
Q 23Giraffes are the tallest land animals and also the largest of which group of mammals?
Ruminants
Q 14The name "Serengeti" is usually said to come from a Maa word meaning what?
Endless plains
Endless plains is the meaning every guidebook gives, tracing the name to a Maasai word, siringet, yet that word turns up in no dictionary of the Maasai language.
Q 15The great wildebeest migration begins each year in which conservation area of the southern Serengeti?
Ngorongoro
Ngorongoro: the herds gather on its short-grass plains early in the year because the rains have just greened them, and about half a million calves are born there before the loop north begins.
Q 16A rhino's horn is made of the same protein as which part of the human body?
Fingernails
Fingernails: the horn is keratin and has no healing power at all, yet demand for it as a traditional remedy drives the poaching that has left most rhino species endangered.
Q 17Wildebeest of the Great Migration usually begin crossing the Mara River into Kenya in which month?
July
July: the herds are following the rains north in search of fresh grass, and the crocodiles waiting at the crossing points are what draw the safari crowds.
Q 18The Sahel, the savanna belt south of the Sahara, takes its name from an Arabic word for what?
Coast or shore
Coast or shore: the belt is pictured as the shoreline along the Sahara's southern side, and in Algeria and Tunisia the same Arabic word names real coastal plains and hills.
Q 19Which South African park became the country's first national park in 1926?
Kruger
Kruger: Paul Kruger's Boer republic set the land aside in 1898 because hunters were wiping out its game, and a British army officer, James Stevenson-Hamilton, became the reserve's first warden in 1902.
Q 20What is the largest and heaviest living land animal?
African bush elephant
African bush elephant: bulls stand more than 3 metres at the shoulder, and unlike Asian elephants both sexes carry tusks, which they use to dig, lift and strip bark from trees.
Ruminants: like a cow, a giraffe swallows its leaves, then sends a ball of cud all the way back up that neck to the mouth for a second chew.
Q 24What are the horn-like structures on a giraffe's head called?
Ossicones
Ossicones are cartilage that has turned to bone and stay covered in skin and hair, and bulls use them as clubs when they swing their necks at each other.
Q 25What gives a giraffe its towering neck?
Seven very long vertebrae
Seven very long vertebrae: a giraffe has exactly as many neck bones as a human, but each of them is more than 25 cm long.
Q 26A giraffe's tongue is dark, almost black; what is the colour thought to protect it from?
Sunburn
Sunburn: the tongue is about 45 cm long and spends much of the day out in the sun wrapping around leaves, while thick saliva and tough skin deal with the thorns.
Q 27Which sound does a cheetah mother use to call her hidden cubs?
A chirp
A chirp: unlike lions and tigers, a cheetah cannot roar; it chirps, purrs, growls and hisses instead, and adults greet each other with the same call.
Q 28Unlike most cats, a cheetah cannot fully do what with its claws?
Retract them
Retract them: with no sheath to slide back into, the claws stay out and bite into the ground like the cleats on a running shoe, giving the cat grip at full sprint.
Q 29Outside sub-Saharan Africa, wild lions survive today in which one country?
India
India: several hundred Asiatic lions live in and around the Gir forest of Gujarat, the last of a population that once ranged west to Turkey and was largely shot out by hunters.
Q 30A lion pride is made up of related females and cubs plus what?
One or a few unrelated adult males
One or a few unrelated adult males hold a pride only until stronger rivals fight their way in, often within a few years, while the lionesses stay together for life.