100 free The Serengeti trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 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 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Serengeti National Park lies in the north of which country?
Tanzania
The wider Serengeti region also extends across the border into south-western Kenya.
Q 02The name Serengeti is popularly said to come from a Maasai word meaning what?
Endless plains
Oddly, the supposed source word does not actually appear in dictionaries of the Maa language.
Q 03Roughly how many zebra travel with the great migration each year, ahead of the main herds?
About 250,000
Up to half a million Thomson's gazelle and smaller herds of eland travel too.
Q 04The migrating herds cross into which Kenyan reserve for the dry season?
The Maasai Mara
'Mara' means 'spotted' in Maa, after the short bushy trees dotting the landscape.
Q 05Roughly how long is the complete great migration route?
About 800 km
It is the world's second-longest overland migration, after that of the caribou.
Q 06Roughly how many wildebeest die each year on the migration from thirst, hunger, exhaustion or predators?
About 250,000
Around 30,000 zebras die too, and for every wildebeest a crocodile takes at the river, fifty drown.
Q 07About how many calves do the wildebeest give birth to on the short-grass plains in a two-to-three-week window in February?
500,000
Calves born early rarely survive because they stand out among the previous year's youngsters.
Q 08Which two rivers do the herds have to cross, with around 3,000 crocodiles lying in wait?
The Grumeti and the Mara
The crossings begin in July and are one of the most popular sights on safari.
Q 09Which is the only permanently flowing river in the Serengeti ecosystem?
The Mara
It rises on Kenya's Mau Escarpment and drains into Lake Victoria; deforestation of the Mau Forest has changed its flow.
Q 10In which year was the Serengeti National Park established?
1940
Major Richard Hingston had proposed national park status in 1930, and strict protection came in 1948.
Q 11In 1959 an 8,300-square-kilometre tract in the park's east was split off for the resident pastoralists. What was it re-established as?
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area
It was set up as a multiple land-use area where Maasai pastoralism could continue.
Q 12The Ngorongoro Crater is the world's largest inactive, intact and unfilled example of what?
A volcanic caldera
It formed when a huge volcano erupted and collapsed two to three million years ago; the floor covers 260 square kilometres.
Q 13How deep is the Ngorongoro Crater?
610 m
The original volcano may have stood 4,500 to 5,800 metres tall before it collapsed.
Q 21Roughly how many lions live in the Serengeti ecosystem, the largest population in Africa?
Over 3,000
Since 2005 the park and the neighbouring Kenyan reserve have together formed a Lion Conservation Unit.
Q 22An outbreak of which disease killed roughly a third of the Serengeti's lions in 1994?
Canine distemper
Mass rabies vaccination of domestic dogs has since protected both people and endangered wild dogs.
Q 23Which predator became extinct in the Serengeti National Park in the early 1990s before being returned in 2012?
The African wild dog
Lions and spotted hyenas steal their kills and kill them directly, keeping numbers low across the region.
Q 14The name Ngorongoro is said to imitate the sound of what?
A cowbell
The Maasai pastoralists named it; the first European to enter the crater was Oscar Baumann in 1892.
Q 15Which steep ravine in the eastern Serengeti plains is one of the world's most important sites for early human fossils?
Olduvai Gorge
Its name comes from the Maasai for 'the place of the wild sisal', which grows all through the ravine.
Q 16Which husband-and-wife team pioneered the excavations at the Serengeti's famous fossil ravine in the 1950s?
Louis and Mary Leakey
Their family continues the work today; the site is one of the country's National Historic Sites.
Q 17In July 1959 Mary Leakey found the skull of which hominin at Olduvai's FLK site?
Zinjanthropus boisei
Its sagittal crest and huge molars suggested a diet of tough plants; Homo habilis remains followed in the 1960s.
Q 18Which German zoo director and his son made the Oscar-winning 1959 documentary Serengeti Shall Not Die?
Bernhard Grzimek
He was director of Frankfurt Zoo and a household name in West Germany through his TV series Ein Platz für Tiere.
Q 19How did Michael Grzimek die during the filming of Serengeti Shall Not Die in January 1959?
His plane hit a vulture over Ngorongoro
He was flying the zebra-striped Dornier the pair used for aerial animal counts; the bird was probably a Rüppell's griffon.
Q 20Which Academy Award did Serengeti Shall Not Die win in 1960?
Best Documentary Feature
The companion book, published in English in 1961, became a bestseller.
Q 24To roughly what number did 1980s poaching reduce the Serengeti's eastern black rhinos?
About 10
Fewer than 70 survived in the park as of the mid-2020s.
Q 25How many Masai giraffes were estimated to live in the park in 2010, down from 10,750 in 1977?
About 3,520
Numbers have stabilised in the centre of the park but keep falling around the edges.
Q 26What are the granite outcrops of the Serengeti plains, used as lookouts by predators, called?
Kopjes
They are ancient plutons uplifted 180 million years ago, and their trapped soil supports trees where the plain has only short grass.
Q 27The Serengeti's volcanic grasslands grow on ash from Kerimasi and which still-active volcano famous for its natrocarbonatite lava?
Ol Doinyo Lengai
Rapid weathering of that unusual lava created layers of calcareous tuff and hard-pan soils.
Q 28What is the main settlement inside the Serengeti National Park, home to its primary airstrip and research institute?
Seronera
Human habitation in the park is otherwise forbidden except for park staff, researchers and lodge workers.
Q 29Which of the park's early game wardens is credited with bringing its rampant poaching under control?
Myles Turner
Even so, a 2001 study estimated that around 200,000 animals are still killed by poachers every year.
Q 30A plan mooted in 2005-12 and revived in 2024 proposed building what through the park?
A 452 km highway
Conservationists warned it could disrupt the wildebeest migration; southern routes bypassing the park were proposed instead.