This tropical trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers everything between the two tropics: the geography (where the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn sit, the Amazon, Borneo, the Galápagos, the Maldives, Kilimanjaro's snow), the weather (hurricanes versus typhoons, trade winds and the doldrums), the wildlife (sloths, toucans, jaguars, capybaras, orangutans, poison dart frogs, hummingbirds and clownfish), the fruit bowl (pineapples, bananas, mangoes, coconuts, durian, jackfruit and dragon fruit) and the party (piña coladas, mai tais, mojitos, rum, tiki bars, ukuleles, hula and leis). It works as a round for a luau, beach party or summer pub quiz as well as a geography or biology warm-up. The easy questions are ones anyone who has been on holiday can answer; the medium ones ask about rainforest facts and famous islands; the hard ones want the child who worked out how to hand-pollinate vanilla, the town that invented the daiquiri and the year Puerto Rico made the piña colada official. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The tropics' northern boundary is named after Cancer. What is the southern one named after?
Capricorn
Both tropics sit at about 23.4 degrees, matching Earth's axial tilt.
Q 02At roughly what latitude do the two tropics lie?
23.4 degrees
The tropics cover almost 40% of Earth's surface and 36% of its land.
Q 03About what share of Earth's surface area lies within the tropics?
40%
The tropics are also called the torrid zone.
Q 04Which country holds about 60% of the Amazon rainforest?
Brazil
The forest spans nine nations and holds an estimated 390 billion trees of some 16,000 species.
Q 05The Amazon River holds which world record?
Largest discharge of water
Whether it or the Nile is the longest river remains disputed.
Q 06Estimates say what share of all species live in rainforests?
40% to 75%
Millions of rainforest insects, plants and microbes are thought to be still undiscovered.
Q 07The Great Barrier Reef lies off the coast of which Australian state?
Queensland
With 2,900 reefs and 900 islands it is the biggest single structure made by living organisms and can be seen from space.
Q 08Coral bleaching happens when corals lose what?
Their symbiotic algae
Stress from warmer water, light or salinity makes them expel the algae and pigments that give them colour.
Q 09In a group of clownfish, which individual sits at the top of the dominance hierarchy?
The breeding female
They shelter in sea anemones and, in return, protect and clean them.
Q 10A tropical cyclone in the northwestern Pacific is called what?
A typhoon
In the Atlantic and northeastern Pacific the same storm is a hurricane; around 80 to 90 named ones form each year worldwide.
Q 11Sailors call the windless zone near the equator where the trade winds meet what?
The doldrums
Meteorologists call it the Intertropical Convergence Zone.
Q 12In the Northern Hemisphere tropics, the trade winds blow mainly from which direction?
The northeast
South of the equator they come from the southeast; both sets flow east to west.
Q 13Which country's name literally means "equator" in Spanish?
Ecuador
The Galápagos Islands, which also straddle the equator, are one of its provinces.
Which naturalist studied the endemic species of the Galápagos Islands in the 1830s?
Q 21Tahiti is the largest and most populous island of which overseas collectivity?
French Polynesia
Around two-thirds of the collectivity's people live there.
Q 22In the wild, pineapples are pollinated mainly by which animal?
Hummingbirds
That is why Hawaii, once the world's canning capital, banned importing them: pollinated pineapples fill with seeds.
Q 23Christopher Columbus first met the pineapple in 1493 on which island?
Guadeloupe
He took it back to Spain as piña de Indes, "pine of the Indians".
Botanically, what kind of fruit is a banana?
Charles Darwin
The volcanic archipelago lies about 900 km west of mainland South America.
Q 15Which chain of 26 atolls is Earth's lowest-lying country, averaging about 1.5 metres in elevation?
The Maldives
Its highest natural point is just 2.4 metres above the sea.
Q 16Borneo, the world's third-largest island, is divided among how many countries?
Three
Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei share it; the Indonesian part is called Kalimantan.
Q 17Angel Falls, the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall at 979 metres, is in which country?
Venezuela
It drops off the Auyán-tepui in Canaima National Park.
Q 18Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, sits just south of the equator in which country?
Tanzania
It is a dormant volcano and the highest free-standing mountain in the world at 5,895 metres.
Q 19Singapore lies roughly how far north of the equator?
About one degree
That is about 137 km, at the tip of the Malay Peninsula.
Q 20Bali is unusual within Indonesia for being the only province with a majority of which religion?
Hinduism
About 86% of Balinese follow Balinese Hinduism.
A berry
It grows on the largest herbaceous flowering plant in the world, not a tree.
Q 25Which banana variety became the dominant Western supermarket banana in the 1960s?
Cavendish
It is a triploid Musa acuminata, threatened by Panama disease and black sigatoka.
Q 26The mango is the national fruit of India, Pakistan and which other country?
The Philippines
The mango tree is the national tree of Bangladesh, near where the fruit originated.
Q 27The durian is banned from hotels and public transport in Singapore and Bangkok because of what?
Its lingering smell
Its Latin species name comes from the Italian for civet, whose musk the odour recalled.
Q 28Which is the largest of all tree-borne fruits, weighing up to 55 kg?
Jackfruit
A single fruit can be 90 cm long.
Q 29Dragon fruit grows on what kind of plant?
A cactus
Its Selenicereus cacti are native to southern Mexico and Central America.
Q 30Green papaya contains papain, an enzyme used in kitchens for what?
Tenderising meat
The fruit was first domesticated in southern Mexico and Central America.