50 free Shrimp trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
47 free Shrimp trivia questions with answers. Shrimp are the most eaten seafood in America and among the strangest animals in the sea, and this quiz covers both sides. You will get the biology (why they swim backwards, what deveining removes, how mantis shrimp punch and pistol shrimp make light), the industry (who farms and exports the most, when farms overtook the wild catch) and the culture: prawn cocktail, scampi, shrimp and grits, belacan, Sea-Monkeys, 'shrimp on the barbie' and, of course, Bubba Gump. It suits pub-quiz hosts looking for an offbeat food or nature round, seafood lovers, aquarium hobbyists and anyone who has wondered whether a prawn is just a big shrimp. Questions range from easy to hard so a mixed table can play together. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question carries its source, so if a fact surprises you, you can go and read where it came from.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Shrimp usually swim forward by paddling their swimmerets, but how do they escape danger?
Flicking the tail to shoot backwards
The 'caridoid escape reaction' is nicknamed lobstering. Some species dive straight into the sediment afterwards to hide.
Q 02Shrimp are decapods. How many walking legs does that order's name promise?
Ten
In the common shrimp the first two pairs carry small claws for grabbing food, and the last four pairs are thin legs used mostly for perching. Crabs and lobsters share the ten-legged plan but walk instead of swim.
Q 03How long do shrimp usually live?
One to seven years
They are mostly solitary but can gather in huge schools to spawn. Everything from fish to whales eats them.
Q 04Which of these is true of the words 'shrimp' and 'prawn'?
They are common names with no fixed scientific meaning
Usage flips between countries: big commercial species tend to be called shrimp in the US and prawns in the Commonwealth. Taxonomist Tin-Yam Chan says the terms 'have no definite reference to any known taxonomic groups'.
Q 05The word 'shrimp' comes from Middle English and Low German roots meaning what?
To contract or wrinkle
Related Old Norse words meant 'to shrivel up' and 'a thin person'. That is why calling someone a shrimp is not a compliment.
Q 06Which naturalist described the common shrimp, Crangon crangon, in 1758?
Carl Linnaeus
The much larger common prawn was described by Pennant in 1777. The two European species shaped the whole idea that shrimp are small and prawns are big.
Q 07Which of these does a shrimp use to 'smell' or 'taste' chemicals in the water?
Its antennae
One pair of antennae can be twice the animal's body length. The rostrum is the beak-like spike on the head, used for defence and stability.
Q 08The oldest known shrimp fossils date from which period?
Lower Jurassic
Only 57 exclusively fossil shrimp species are known, because their thin shells rarely preserve. Mantis shrimp, a separate group, go back much further.
Q 09Roughly how much is the global commercial shrimp industry worth per year?
$50 billion
Total production was nearly 7 million tonnes in 2010. Bycatch from wild trawling and pollution from farms are the industry's two big environmental problems.
Q 10In roughly which year did the harvest from shrimp farms first exceed the wild catch?
2007
Farming took off in the 1980s, particularly in China. About three-quarters of farmed shrimp still comes from Asia.
Q 11By 2016, which country was the world's largest shrimp exporter?
India
Ecuador was second, and has since become a giant of whiteleg shrimp farming. Most of the product goes to the US, EU and Japan.
Q 12Which species overtook the giant tiger prawn around 2010 to dominate world shrimp farming?
Whiteleg
Its output rocketed nearly twenty-fold in a decade to 2.7 million tonnes. It breeds well in captivity, grows fast and tolerates crowded ponds.
Q 13Females of the giant tiger prawn, Penaeus monodon, can reach about what length?
33 cm (13 in)
That is why the phrase 'jumbo shrimp' only sounds like an oxymoron. The species has also turned up as an invader in the Gulf of Mexico since 1988.
Q 21Besides noise, what does the collapsing bubble from a pistol shrimp's snap briefly produce?
A flash of light
The effect is called sonoluminescence, and this was the first known animal to produce light that way. It is too faint for the naked eye.
Q 22Some snapping shrimp share a burrow with which fish, which acts as a lookout while the shrimp digs?
A goby
The nearly blind shrimp keeps an antenna touching the fish; a flick of the fish's tail sends both diving for cover. It is a textbook mutualism.
Q 23Cleaner shrimp earn their name by picking what off 'client' fish?
Parasites
They also eat mucus and dead tissue around wounds, which helps the fish heal. Client fish queue at cleaning stations and open their mouths and gills for service.
Q 14Trawling was first recorded in England in 1376, when which king was petitioned to ban it?
Edward III
The Dutch banned shrimp trawling in estuaries in 1583. Modern shrimping only took off with the otter trawl and the internal combustion engine.
Q 15Beach seines imported from France in 1735 let fishermen in which US state start sun-drying white shrimp?
Louisiana
Cajun fishermen still dry shrimp in the sun today. Chinese immigrants later brought Pearl River Delta netting techniques to California during the Gold Rush.
Q 16Mantis shrimp eyes have how many types of photoreceptor cell, compared with four in humans?
12 to 16
They see from deep ultraviolet to far red and can detect polarised light. Six species can even see circularly polarised light, unknown in any other animal.
Q 17The peacock mantis shrimp strikes with an acceleration of about 10,400 g and a speed of roughly what?
23 m/s (51 mph)
The club moves so fast it creates cavitation bubbles that hit the prey a second time as they collapse. Aquarium keepers call the animals 'thumb splitters'.
Q 18Mantis shrimp are usually sorted into which two groups by the shape of their raptorial claws?
Spearers and smashers
Smashers crack open crabs and snails with a club; spearers impale soft prey like fish with barbed spines. Some monogamous species stay with one partner for up to 20 years.
Q 19Ancient Assyrians had a name for mantis shrimp. What did they call them?
Sea locusts
Australians called them prawn killers. Despite the name they are stomatopods, not true shrimp, and split off from other crustaceans about 400 million years ago.
Q 20The pistol shrimp's claw snap creates a bubble reaching a peak of about how many decibels?
218 dB
The bubble flies out at 25 m/s and can stun fish and crack small glass jars. Colonies are loud enough to interfere with sonar and anti-submarine warfare.
Q 24Most of the world's dried brine shrimp cysts, used as fish-farm feed, are harvested from which body of water?
Great Salt Lake, Utah
The eggs can sit dormant for years and hatch on demand. Brine shrimp survive salinity up to 25 percent, which keeps fish predators away.
Q 25Brine shrimp are sold as a novelty pet under what famous brand name?
Sea-Monkeys
Harold von Braunhut launched them as 'Instant Life' in 1957 and renamed them in 1962. He bought millions of pages of comic-book ads a year.
Q 26Which astronaut took a batch of the novelty brine-shrimp pets into orbit on Discovery in 1998?
John Glenn
They spent nine days in space, came home and hatched eight weeks later, apparently none the worse. Glenn was 77 at the time, the oldest person to fly in space until 2021.
Q 27Under what name were the novelty brine-shrimp pets first sold in 1957, before their famous 1962 rebrand?
Instant Life
They sold for 49 cents. Marine biologist Anthony D'Agostino helped work out the dry nutrient mix that made tap water habitable for the shrimp.
Q 28Krill, the shrimp-like crustaceans that feed baleen whales, belong to which order?
Euphausiacea
Antarctic krill alone weigh in at roughly 379 million tonnes, one of the largest biomasses of any species. Over half of it is eaten every year.
Q 29Skeleton shrimp, despite the name, are actually what kind of crustacean?
Amphipods
Their stick-thin bodies cling to seaweed and hydroids. In some species the female kills the male after mating with venom from a claw.
Q 30The emperor shrimp of the Indo-Pacific spends its life riding on the back of which animal?
Sea cucumbers and sea slugs
It even changes colour to match its host. The tiny 3 cm shrimp gets transport and protection while picking food from the water.