The Serengeti Trivia
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95 free The Serengeti trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Serengeti trivia quiz covers the endless plains of northern Tanzania and south-western Kenya, home to the largest overland animal migration on Earth and Africa's biggest lion population. The easy questions handle the basics: which country the national park is in, what the name is said to mean, the animal that makes up the bulk of the great migration, the Kenyan reserve the herds cross into, and the famous song that put Kilimanjaro in the wrong place. From there it moves through the migration itself, the calving on the short-grass plains, the Grumeti and Mara river crossings, the crocodiles and the quarter of a million animals that die each year. The harder half is for safari veterans and naturalists: the 1940 founding of the park, the split that created the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, the world's largest intact caldera, Mary Leakey's 1959 skull at Olduvai, the Grzimeks' Serengeti Shall Not Die and the vulture that killed Michael, the 1994 distemper outbreak among the lions, kopjes and volcanic grasslands, the wild dogs that vanished and returned, and the highway plan that refuses to die. If you enjoyed our Kalahari, Kilimanjaro or big cats quizzes, this is the deep dive on Africa's most famous wilderness. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the Serengeti, Serengeti National Park, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Olduvai Gorge and the people and animals named before publishing.
30 of 95 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Serengeti National Park lies in the north of which country?
Tanzania
Tanzania holds the national park, but the wider Serengeti region spills over the border into south-western Kenya.
Q 02The name Serengeti is popularly said to come from a Maasai word meaning what?
Endless plains
'Endless plains' is the popular gloss of a Maa word, siringet, but that word doesn't actually appear in Maa dictionaries.
Q 03Which grazers often travel ahead of the wildebeest herds on the Serengeti's great migration?
Zebras
Zebras, in their hundreds of thousands, move ahead of well over a million wildebeest as the rains ripen the grass.
Q 04The migrating herds cross into which Kenyan reserve for the dry season?
The Maasai Mara
The 'Mara' in the Maasai Mara's name is Maa for 'spotted', after the short bushy trees that dot its plains.
Q 05Roughly how long is the Serengeti's complete great migration loop?
About 800 km
About 800 km: the herds circle from the southern plains north into Kenya and back again each year.
Q 06Roughly how many wildebeest die on the Serengeti migration each year from thirst, hunger, exhaustion or predators?
About 250,000
About 250,000 die on the trek, the price the herds pay for moving on to fresh grazing.
Q 07About how many wildebeest calves are born on the short-grass plains within a few weeks each February?
500,000
About 500,000 calves arrive within a few weeks, a glut that swamps predators so more youngsters survive.
Q 08Which two rivers must the herds cross, where around 3,000 crocodiles lie in wait?
The Grumeti and the Mara
The Grumeti is crossed from about May and the Mara from about July, as the herds push north into Kenya.
Q 09Which is the only permanently flowing river in the Serengeti ecosystem?
The Mara
The Mara keeps flowing through the dry season because it is fed from Kenya's rainy highlands far upstream.
Q 10Which colonial power governed Tanganyika when the Serengeti became a national park?
Britain
Britain ran Tanganyika after it was taken from Germany in the First World War, and its colonial government turned an older game reserve into the park.
Q 11Which protected area was split off the Serengeti park's eastern side in 1959 so resident Maasai could keep herding?
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area was designed as a multiple land-use area, where Maasai herders could live alongside wildlife.
Q 12The Ngorongoro Crater is the world's largest inactive, intact and unfilled example of what?
A volcanic caldera
This volcanic caldera formed when a huge volcano erupted and collapsed on itself two to three million years ago; its floor covers 260 km².
Q 13Roughly how deep is the Ngorongoro Crater?
About 600 m
Q 21Roughly how many lions live across the Serengeti ecosystem, Africa's largest lion population?
About 3,000
About 3,000 lions live across the ecosystem, and the park and its Kenyan neighbour together form a single Lion Conservation Unit.
Q 22An outbreak of which disease killed roughly a third of the Serengeti's lions in 1994?
Canine distemper
Canine distemper killed about a third of the lions in six to seven months, and a second outbreak hit the Ngorongoro Crater's lions in 2001.
Q 23Which predator became extinct in the Serengeti National Park in the early 1990s before being returned in 2012?
The African wild dog
About 600 m deep, the crater's walls enclose a 260 km² floor that is home to some 25,000 large animals.
Q 14The name Ngorongoro is said to imitate the sound of what?
A cowbell
The Maasai are said to have named it after the 'ngoro ngoro' clang of a cowbell, so the name is onomatopoeic.
Q 15Which steep ravine in the eastern Serengeti plains is one of the world's most important sites for early human fossils?
Olduvai Gorge
Olduvai Gorge is about 48 km long, and its oldest hominin fossils are nearly 1.9 million years old.
Q 16Which husband-and-wife team pioneered the excavations at the Serengeti's famous fossil ravine in the 1950s?
Louis and Mary Leakey
Louis and Mary Leakey were behind most of the site's excavations, and the ravine is one of the country's National Historic Sites.
Q 17Which hominin's skull was found at Olduvai's FLK site in July 1959?
Zinjanthropus boisei
Zinjanthropus boisei, now Paranthropus boisei, had a big crest atop its skull to anchor huge chewing muscles.
Q 18Which German zoo director made the 1959 film Serengeti Shall Not Die with his son?
Bernhard Grzimek
Bernhard Grzimek ran Frankfurt Zoo and was a household name in West Germany through his TV series Ein Platz für Tiere.
Q 19Which bird struck the plane Michael was flying while filming Serengeti Shall Not Die?
A vulture
A vulture: Michael lost control of the plane and was killed in the crash.
Q 20Which Academy Award did Serengeti Shall Not Die win in 1960?
Best Documentary Feature
Best Documentary Feature went to the film, and its best-selling companion book appeared in more than 20 languages.
The African wild dog stays scarce wherever lions and spotted hyenas abound: hyenas steal its kills and lions kill the dogs outright.
Q 24To roughly what number did 1980s poaching reduce the Serengeti's black rhinos?
About 10
About 10 at most: poaching left only a handful, and a 1993 survey found signs of just three in the central Serengeti.
Q 25Serengeti experiments with life-size toy lions showed that lionesses are drawn to males with what?
Darker manes
Darker manes signal higher testosterone, but they cost the male: dark-maned lions run hotter and eat smaller meals in hot weather.
Q 26What are the granite outcrops of the Serengeti plains, used as lookouts by predators, called?
Kopjes
Kopjes, from the Dutch for 'little heads', are granite outcrops pushed up about 180 million years ago that rise from the plains.
Q 27The Serengeti's grasslands grow on deposits from Kerimasi and which still-active volcano famous for its natrocarbonatite lava?
Ol Doinyo Lengai
Ol Doinyo Lengai's unusual lava weathers so fast that it laid down the calcium-rich tuff and hard-pan soils beneath the short grass.
Q 28What is the main settlement inside the Serengeti National Park, home to its primary airstrip and research institute?
Seronera
Seronera is the park's main settlement, and only park staff, researchers and lodge and camp workers may live inside the park.
Q 29Which American novelist hunted in the Serengeti on a 1933 safari that later fed his fiction?
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway caught amoebic dysentery on the trip and was flown out to Nairobi past Kilimanjaro, which inspired The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
Q 30A plan dropped in 2011 and revived in 2024 proposed building what through Serengeti National Park?
A 452 km highway
A 452 km highway was dropped in 2011 after warnings it would cut across the migration, and a southern route around the park was weighed instead.