Temperate Grasslands
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40 free Temperate Grasslands trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Temperate grasslands are the open, mostly treeless country that lies between the forests and the deserts of the middle latitudes. They go by different names around the world: prairie in North America, steppe across Eurasia, pampas in South America and veld in southern Africa. Too dry for woodland and too wet for desert, they are shaped by drought, fire and grazing herds. This quiz turns fun facts about temperate grasslands into questions. It covers the animals that run, burrow and nest on the open plains, the grasses and wildflowers themselves, the wild weather, and the people whose lives were tied to these landscapes, from nomadic herders to pioneer farmers. It suits students working on a biome project, teachers who want a ready-made review, and anyone curious about wide-open spaces. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so each question leaves you with a fact worth repeating.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which icon of cowboy films is really an invasive plant that reached South Dakota from Russia in the 1870s?
Tumbleweed
Tumbleweed of the classic kind is Russian thistle, which arrived in contaminated flaxseed. The dry plant snaps off at the stem and scatters its seeds as the wind rolls it along.
Q 02Baikonur Cosmodrome, launch site of Sputnik 1 and Yuri Gagarin, stands on the open steppe of which country?
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan leases the spaceport to Russia. The name Baikonur was reportedly chosen in 1961 to mislead the West toward a small mining town some 320 km away.
Q 03Which naturalist realised in Patagonia that a flightless bird his party had just eaten was a species he had long sought?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin rescued the head, neck, legs and a wing from the leftovers of the bird, which the expedition's artist had shot. The species still carries his name.
Q 04Burrowing owls of the American grasslands defend their underground nests by imitating which feared animal?
Rattlesnake
Rattlesnake-like rattling and hissing comes from inside the burrow when the owl feels threatened, a bluff that works on predators that have learned to fear the real snake.
Q 05Which pioneer vehicle of the American West was nicknamed the prairie schooner?
Covered wagon
Covered wagon tops of white canvas looked like a ship's sails crossing a sea of grass, though oxen, mules or horses did the hauling, not the wind.
Q 06Prairie dogs, the burrowing 'town' builders of North America's grasslands, belong to which family of rodents?
Squirrels
Squirrels count prairie dogs among their ground-dwelling relatives, alongside marmots and chipmunks. Explorer Meriwether Lewis called the animal a barking squirrel.
Q 07Which shaggy grazer of the North American prairie was named the national mammal of the United States in 2016?
Bison
Bison once roamed in vast herds, but hunting in the 1800s cut their number to as few as 541 before conservation brought them back.
Q 08Which sprinter of the North American prairie is the fastest land mammal in the Americas, reaching about 55 mph?
Pronghorn
Pronghorn cannot match a cheetah's burst but can hold top speed for far longer. Often called antelope, they are not true antelopes at all.
Q 09Which garden flower, a symbol of the Netherlands, grows wild on steppes and mountains as far east as Central Asia?
Tulip
Tulip bulbs were first cultivated by Persian and Turkish gardeners, long before the flower reached Dutch fields.
Q 10Which Ice Age giant gives its name to the cold, dry steppe that was once Earth's most extensive biome?
Mammoth
Mammoth steppe stretched from Iberia across Eurasia and Alaska to Canada's Yukon during the ice ages, feeding huge herds of grazing animals.
Q 11What name is given to the skilled, wandering cattle herders on horseback of the Argentine and Uruguayan pampas?
Gaucho
Gaucho riders, reputed to be brave and unruly, became a folk symbol of Argentina and Uruguay, celebrated in legend and literature.
Q 12Which ruler united the nomadic tribes of the steppe in 1206 and founded the largest contiguous empire in history?
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan was born Temüjin and took his famous title at a tribal assembly; what the title actually means is still uncertain.
Q 13Which round, portable tent, insulated with felt, is the traditional home of herders on the Central Asian steppe?
Yurt
Yurt is a word from the Turkic languages, and the same felt-insulated home is also known as a ger.
Q 21Which masked prairie predator was declared extinct in 1979, until a wild colony turned up in Wyoming two years later?
Black-footed ferret
Black-footed ferret numbers collapsed along with prairie dogs, which make up as much as 90% of its diet. Captive breeding has since returned it to eight US states.
Q 22Which antelope of the Central Asian steppe is instantly recognised by its bloated, downward-pointing nostrils?
Saiga
Saiga males alone carry horns, which are thick, wax-coloured and slightly translucent, with 12 to 20 pronounced rings.
Q 23Przewalski's horse, once extinct in the wild, was returned from zoo-bred herds in the 1990s to which country's steppe?
Mongolia
Q 14In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a cyclone carries Dorothy and Toto away from a prairie farm in which state?
Kansas
Kansas is home to Dorothy, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, and getting back there drives the whole story, by way of a yellow brick road.
Q 15Which author turned her pioneer childhood on the American frontier into the Little House on the Prairie books?
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Ingalls Wilder published the novels in the 1930s and 1940s, half a century after the frontier childhood they describe.
Q 16Which 1930s disaster struck after farmers ploughed up the deep-rooted grasses that held prairie soil in place?
Dust Bowl
Dust Bowl storms blew away topsoil that native grasses had trapped through earlier droughts, after a run of wet years had convinced settlers the climate had changed for good.
Q 17Which blacksmith built a polished steel plough in 1837 that could finally cut through sticky prairie soil?
John Deere
John Deere, born in Vermont, made the first commercially successful steel plough; its self-scouring blade shed the clay that clogged older designs.
Q 18Which North American prairie native, whose young buds turn to follow daylight, is grown worldwide for oil-rich seeds?
Sunflower
Sunflower buds stop turning once they mature and face east from then on. Native Americans grew the plant as a crop long before it reached Europe.
Q 19Which antelope of South Africa's grasslands, famed for stiff-legged leaps called pronking, is the national animal?
Springbok
Springbok leaps can carry the animal 2 metres into the air, and the word pronking comes from the Afrikaans for showing off.
Q 20Which large flightless bird, resembling a small ostrich, roams the open pampas of South America?
Rhea
Rhea fathers do the nesting: the male incubates anywhere from ten to sixty eggs. South Americans know the bird as the ñandú.
Mongolia's herds descend from a handful of horses caught for zoos around 1900. The animal has 33 pairs of chromosomes, one more than a domestic horse.
Q 24Which humus-rich soil of the Eurasian steppe, named from the Russian for its dark colour, gives very high farm yields?
Chernozem
Chernozem means black earth: the soil holds 4 to 16% humus and stores moisture well, which is why ploughed steppe makes such productive farmland.
Q 25The name of South America's pampas comes from a word for 'plain' in which Indigenous language?
Quechua
Quechua gave Spanish the word pampa. The Pampas now take in parts of Argentina, all of Uruguay and the southern tip of Brazil.
Q 26The Puszta, a grassy plain of grey cattle and mounted herdsmen called csikós, lies in which European country?
Hungary
Hungary's Puszta is also home to the woolly Mangalitsa pig and the horned Racka sheep, breeds bound up with its herding traditions.
Q 27Which mildly alcoholic drink of the Central Asian steppe is made by fermenting mare's milk?
Kumis
Kumis turns out mildly alcoholic because mare's milk holds more sugar than cow's or goat's milk, giving the yeasts more to work on.
Q 28Which invention, patented by farmer Joseph Glidden in 1874, gave settlers a cheap way to fence the treeless plains?
Barbed wire
Barbed wire was cheaper and quicker than timber rails or thorny hedges, and it set fence-building farmers against ranchers who were losing the open range.
Q 29Grasses survive constant grazing and mowing because each leaf blade keeps growing from which part?
Its base
Its base is where a grass blade grows, so a bite or a mower removes only the oldest part and the leaf simply lengthens again from below.
Q 30Which violent storms strike the United States, above all its central plains, more often than any other country?
Tornadoes
Tornadoes are born there when warm, humid air meets cool, dry air from Canada, which is why the region is nicknamed Tornado Alley.