50 free Swan trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Swans are the largest waterfowl and among the heaviest birds that can still fly, and this quiz covers them from biology to ballet. It starts with the six living species and their odd geography: white in the north, black and black-necked in the south, the mute swan's closest cousin turning out to be Australia's black swan; the names cob, pen and cygnet; the knob on the bill; the serrated 'teeth'; how faithful the famous pair bonds really are; and the extinct Maltese giant that stood taller than the island's dwarf elephants. It then moves to the swan in human life: the Crown's swans and Swan Upping on the Thames, Elizabethan baked swan, the trumpeter's rescue from fewer than 70 birds, the black swan on Western Australia's flag, Denmark's and Finland's national birds, Zeus and Leda, the Children of Lir, the swans of the Well of Urd, Jan Hus's prophecy about Luther, Saraswati's mount, Swan Lake's failed premiere and Odette and Odile. Easy questions ask what a baby swan is called and which swan is black; hard ones want incubation periods, divorce rates and Latin poets. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on swans and the species, ceremonies and works involved, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Our Birds quiz goes wider.
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Q 01What is a young swan called?
A cygnet
From the Latin via Old French; an adult male is a cob and an adult female a pen.
Q 02What is an adult male swan called?
A cob
The word comes from Middle English 'cobbe', leader of a group; the female is a pen.
Q 03What is a group of swans called?
A bevy or a wedge
'Wedge' usually describes swans in V-formation flight; 'bevy' is the general term.
Q 04How many living species of true swan are there?
Six
The South American coscoroba swan carries the name but is no longer counted as a true swan.
Q 05Swans belong to which family, alongside ducks and geese?
Anatidae
Swans and geese together form the subfamily Anserinae; the swan genus is Cygnus.
Q 06The English word 'swan' comes from an Indo-European root meaning what?
To sound or sing
That makes 'swan song' something of a tautology; the German Schwan and Swedish svan share the root.
Q 07The largest swans can weigh over how much?
15 kg
Mute, trumpeter and whooper swans can pass 1.5 metres in length with wingspans over 3.1 metres.
Q 08The biggest swan ever, the extinct flightless Cygnus falconeri, is known from fossils on which islands?
Malta and Sicily
At over 2 metres from tail to bill it stood taller, though not heavier, than the local dwarf elephants.
Q 09Northern Hemisphere swans have pure pale plumage; how do the Southern Hemisphere species differ?
They mix black and white
The Australian species has white flight feathers, and its South American cousin has a white body and dark neck.
Q 10Which species has pink legs, unlike the blackish-grey legs of the rest?
The black-necked
It lives in southern South America; the four subarctic species have black bills with varying yellow.
Q 11The fleshy lump at the base of a mute swan's bill is called what?
The knob
It is larger in males and changes with the seasons; one South American species has one too.
Q 12Swans are entirely absent from which continent?
Africa
They also skip tropical Asia, Central America and northern South America; the mute swan has been introduced across the Atlantic.
Q 13What do swans mainly eat?
Aquatic plants
They up-end or dabble for roots, tubers, stems and leaves; their serrated bills also snag molluscs and small fish now and then.
Q 21Swan meat was regarded as a luxury food in England during whose reign?
Elizabeth I
A surviving recipe bakes the boned bird in a 'deep Coffin of Rye Paste' with plenty of butter.
Q 22Which is a common misconception about swans in the United Kingdom?
That the monarch owns all of them and alone may eat them
The Crown owns unmarked mute swans in open water, and shares the Thames birds with two City livery companies.
Q 23In Greek myth, Zeus took the form of a swan to seduce which queen?
Leda
Helen of Troy was conceived from that union; Yeats retold it in his poem Leda and the Swan.
Q 14Trumpeter swans can form monogamous pair bonds as early as what age?
20 months
They live to about 24 and only start breeding at 4 to 7, so the bond comes long before the first eggs.
Q 15A study of mute swans found what 'divorce' rate among pairs that breed successfully?
3%
Pairs that fail to breed split up three times as often, at 9%.
Q 16Along with the whistling ducks, swans are the only anatids in which the male does what?
Helps build the nest and incubates
Nests are about a metre across on the ground near water, and both parents defend them ferociously.
Q 17How long is the mute swan's incubation period?
34 to 45 days
A clutch is four to seven eggs, each around 340 grams.
Q 18The genus Cygnus is thought to have evolved where?
Europe or western Eurasia
It spread across the Northern Hemisphere by the Pliocene; when the southern species branched off is unknown.
Q 19Despite living in Eurasia, the mute swan's closest living relative is which bird?
Australia's black species
Its curved neck, fluffed wings, bill colour and knob all point to the southern lineage.
Q 20Which fairy tale is probably the best-known story about a swan?
The Ugly Duckling
Swans also feature in two Wagner operas, Lohengrin and Parsifal, and everywhere as symbols of love and fidelity.
Q 24The phrase 'swan song' comes from the ancient belief that which species sang beautifully at death?
The mute
The mute swan was sacred to Apollo, who is often shown riding a chariot pulled by swans.
Q 25The Latin phrase 'rara avis' descends from Juvenal comparing a good woman to what?
A black swan
Black swans were unknown to Europeans until the Dutch reached Australia in the 1600s, so the joke meant 'impossible'.
Q 26In the Irish legend of the Children of Lir, a stepmother turned the children into swans for how long?
900 years
In another tale, The Wooing of Etain, a fairy king and Etain escape as swans; the swan appears on a modern Irish coin.
Q 27In Norse myth, two swans drink from which sacred spring in Asgard, whose water turns everything white?
The Well of Urd
According to the Prose Edda, all swans descend from that original white pair.
Q 28Which composer wrote The Swan of Tuonela, based on the Finnish epic Kalevala?
Jean Sibelius
In the Kalevala the swan lives on the river of the underworld, and whoever kills it dies too.
Q 29The whooper swan is the national bird of which country?
Finland
Five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic countries as a whole; Denmark chose the mute swan.
Q 30Swan Lake's dual lead roles are Odette and Odile, representing what?
Good and evil
The white swan and the black swan are among the hardest roles in Romantic classical ballet.