Tortoise Trivia
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46 free Tortoise trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Tortoises are the longest-lived land animals on Earth, and this quiz is built around the individuals who proved it: Jonathan on St Helena, hatched around 1832 and still eating; Tu'i Malila, given to Tonga's royal family by Captain Cook; Harriet, who may have sailed with Darwin; Adwaita of Kolkata, possibly 255; and Lonesome George, the last of his kind. Alongside them are the giants of the Galápagos and Aldabra, the desert and gopher tortoises of North America, the leopard and sulcata of Africa, and the little padlopers of the Cape. It also covers how tortoises work: why counting shell rings does not give you an age, how a creature that cannot swim colonised islands 740 km offshore, how to sex one from its tail, why hatchlings eat worms, and how two Russian tortoises became the first animals to circle the Moon. Aesop, Hermes' lyre, Vishnu's Kurma and Chinese oracle bones round out the culture. Easy questions ask what tortoises eat and where they are absent; hard ones want incubation periods, weights and hippocampus anatomy. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on tortoises and the species and individuals involved, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Our Turtles & Tortoises quiz covers the wider order if you want sea turtles and terrapins too.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Tortoises are the longest-living what?
Land animals
Land animals, not the whole animal kingdom: tortoises can top 150 years, but Greenland sharks are estimated to live at least 272.
Q 02Which country's royal family kept Tu'i Malila, a tortoise said to have been a gift from Captain Cook?
Tonga
Tonga's royal tortoise Tu'i Malila was a radiated tortoise, a species found naturally only in Madagascar, so a ship must have carried her there.
Q 03Adwaita, an Aldabra giant tortoise claimed to be over 250 when he died, lived at a zoo in which Indian city?
Kolkata
Kolkata's Alipore Zoo lost Adwaita in 2006 after a crack in his shell left a wound that led to his death.
Q 04Timothy the tortoise spent 38 years as a mascot aboard which country's warships?
Britain's
Britain's Royal Navy found Timothy aboard a Portuguese privateer in 1854, and she sailed as a ship's mascot through the Crimean War.
Q 05Which Greek philosopher argued that swift Achilles could never overtake a tortoise with a head start?
Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea reasoned that Achilles must first reach where the tortoise was, by which time it has crept ahead, again and again forever.
Q 06What is the easiest way to tell a male tortoise from a female?
Look at the tail
Look at the tail: males grow much longer tails, and a male's plastron curves inward to aid mating.
Q 07In a 2014 study, red-footed tortoises learned to earn rewards by using what?
A touchscreen
A touchscreen: the tortoises learned to pick one side of the screen, and kept that preference when tested in a real arena.
Q 08Which region of the world has no native tortoises?
Australasia
Australasia lacks the land tortoises found on every other continent except Antarctica, yet Australians traditionally called their freshwater turtles 'tortoises'.
Q 09Tortoises can't swim, so how did giant tortoises first reach the Galápagos from South America?
By drifting at sea
By drifting at sea: the first giant tortoises floated over from the South American coast, where their closest living relatives are found.
Q 10Most traditional 'tortoiseshell' for combs and jewellery came from which animal?
Hawksbill turtles
Hawksbill turtles' mottled shell plates were the prized material, and hunting them for it nearly drove the species to extinction.
Q 11What feeds newly hatched tortoises until they are strong enough to find food?
An embryonic egg sac
An embryonic egg sac: a hatchling may sit in its egg while the sac is absorbed, and until then it can barely move.
Q 12What do tortoises generally eat?
Grasses, weeds, greens and flowers
Grasses, weeds, greens and flowers are the usual menu, yet in the Seychelles a giant tortoise was filmed chasing, killing and eating a tern chick.
Q 13How do tortoises communicate during both combat and courtship?
Ramming
Q 21What was Lonesome George?
The last Pinta Island tortoise
The last Pinta Island tortoise was found in 1971 on an island stripped by feral goats, and decades of attempts to breed him all failed.
Q 22Which giant tortoise fathered about 900 offspring in a breeding programme before retiring in 2020?
Diego
Diego got the headlines, yet a quieter male known as E5 fathered most of the programme's other young.
Q 23Harriet, who died at Australia Zoo in 2006 aged about 175, was long claimed to have been collected by whom?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin probably never had her: DNA tests showed Harriet came from an island that he never visited.
Ramming: males shove rivals with their shells, and a courting Galápagos male rams a female until she draws in her legs.
Q 14Which Hindu god took the form of Kurma, a giant tortoise, to hold up a sinking mountain?
Vishnu
Vishnu became Kurma because Mount Mandara, used as the rod to churn the ocean for the nectar of immortality, had begun to sink.
Q 15Which Greek god, on the day he was born, made the first lyre from a tortoise shell?
Hermes
Hermes also stole Apollo's cattle, and ended the quarrel by trading him the lyre, which became Apollo's emblem.
Q 16Two Russian tortoises became the first animals to do what?
Fly to and circle the Moon
Fly to and circle the Moon: Zond 5 missed its Kazakhstan landing zone and splashed down in the Indian Ocean with the tortoises alive.
Q 17In which Roald Dahl story does Mr Hoppy secretly swap a neighbour's pet tortoise for ever-bigger ones?
Esio Trot
Esio Trot is 'tortoise' backwards, and Mrs Silver credits a made-up chant for Alfie's growth while Mr Hoppy does the swapping.
Q 18Which Greek playwright is said to have died when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head?
Aeschylus
Aeschylus had reportedly been staying outdoors because an oracle foretold that a falling house would kill him that day.
Q 19On the Galápagos' dry islands, saddle-shaped shells help tortoises feed on what?
Cactus pads
Cactus pads grow high on the dry islands, and a shell raised at the front lets a tortoise stretch its neck up to reach them.
Q 20Galápagos tortoises survive up to a year without food or water, so why did whalers pack them into ships' holds?
As fresh meat
As fresh meat: pirates, whalers and fur sealers took so many live tortoises that several island populations were wiped out.
Q 24Jonathan, the oldest known living tortoise as of 2025, was taken from the Seychelles to which island?
Saint Helena
Saint Helena's governor gave Jonathan an official birthday of 4 December in 2022, since nobody had recorded his real one.
Q 25Why is Jonathan the giant tortoise's age only an estimate?
He arrived fully grown in 1882
He arrived fully grown in 1882, and reaching full size takes at least 50 years, so his hatching is put no later than 1832.
Q 26Jonathan the tortoise's vet said he was blind and could not smell, but had excellent what?
Hearing
Hearing: unable to see or smell his food, Jonathan was fed by hand, and his vet took to wearing thick gloves after a nip.
Q 27Jonathan appears on the reverse of which coin of his home island?
Five pence
Commemorative stamps marked his supposed 190th birthday in 2022, and visitors got a certificate with a photo of his first known footprint.
Q 28Aldabra Atoll is home to roughly how many giant tortoises, the world's largest population?
100,000
The atoll's isolation from humans saved a species whose Indian Ocean cousins were all gone by 1840.
Q 29In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, why did the Mock Turtle's old schoolmaster get called Tortoise?
He taught us
He taught us: Lewis Carroll's pun works because 'tortoise' and 'taught us' sound alike, and the master was really an old turtle.
Q 30An isolated Aldabra tortoise population lives on Changuu, an island near which African island?
Zanzibar
One tortoise there is reportedly 200 years old.