50 free Tundra trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This tundra trivia quiz covers the coldest biome on Earth, from the Arctic plains of Siberia and Canada to the alpine tundra above the tree line and the mossy fringes of Antarctica. The easy questions are the ones from a school geography lesson: what stops trees growing, what the frozen ground is called, which language the word comes from, and which big animals wander the barrens. From there it moves into the numbers behind the biome: how little precipitation falls, how cold winter gets, how few mammal species live there and how much of the Northern Hemisphere sits on frozen soil. The harder end is for people who like the details: the two Russian cities built on continuous permafrost, the fossil relatives of the muskox, the Inuktitut name for 'the bearded one', how many pups an Arctic fox can have, why lemmings never really jump off cliffs and which Disney film faked it, the Gaelic origin of the word ptarmigan, and the only two flowering plants on the Antarctic continent. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the tundra, permafrost and its animals before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Arctic, polar bear and rainforest quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What prevents trees from growing in a tundra?
Cold and a very short summer
Tundra vegetation is limited to dwarf shrubs, sedges, grasses, mosses and lichens.
Q 02From which language does the word 'tundra' come?
Russian
It may ultimately derive from a Sámi word for a treeless upland or marshy plain.
Q 03Which three regions and types of tundra are recognised?
Arctic, Alpine and Antarctic
Alpine tundra can occur on high mountains at any latitude.
Q 04What is the name for the boundary between tundra and forest?
Tree line
It is also called the timberline.
Q 05In which year did the word tundra first appear in English, spelled 'toundra'?
1824
The French-looking spelling suggests it may have been borrowed via French.
Q 06Arctic tundra lies north of which forest belt?
The taiga
The Arctic tundra covers vast areas of northern Russia and Canada.
Q 07What is the approximate average winter temperature on the Arctic tundra?
-28 °C
Surprisingly, the very lowest temperatures in Russia, Canada and Alaska were recorded further south, in the forest zone.
Q 08Roughly how much precipitation does Arctic tundra receive per year, qualifying it as a polar desert?
150-250 mm
Because evaporation is so low, the ground still turns to marsh and bog in summer.
Q 09How many species of land mammals live in the tundra, according to standard biodiversity counts?
48
There are about 1,700 vascular plant species, though millions of birds migrate to the marshes each year.
Q 10Which class of cold-blooded animals is almost entirely absent from the tundra?
Frogs and lizards
The mosquito, by contrast, is one of its most notorious residents.
Q 11Labrador tea, a notable Arctic tundra plant, belongs to which genus?
Rhododendron
Blueberry, crowberry and reindeer lichen grow alongside it.
Q 12Which region of Siberia, largely tundra, produces about 90% of the country's natural gas?
Yamalo-Nenets
Tundra regions are often rich in petroleum, gas and uranium despite seeing little human activity.
Q 13Which two peoples of the Siberian permafrost tundra are mostly nomadic reindeer herders?
Nganasan and Nenets
The Sámi herd reindeer further west, in Sápmi.
Q 21Roughly what share of the exposed land surface of the Northern Hemisphere is underlain by permafrost?
15%
That is about 18 million square kilometres, including much of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia.
Q 22The deepest permafrost extends to greater than what depth?
1,500 m
The shallowest is less than a metre thick.
Q 23What is the name for the seasonally thawing ground above permafrost in which plant roots can grow?
Active layer
Plant roots can only take hold in this seasonally thawed soil.
Q 24Which two large cities are the only ones in the world built on continuous permafrost?
Q 14Under the Köppen climate system, what code denotes a tundra climate?
ET
At least one month averages above freezing but none gets warm enough for trees.
Q 15Above what monthly average temperature does a climate stop counting as tundra under the Köppen system?
10 °C
That warm-summer limit roughly matches the poleward limit of trees.
Q 16How many flowering plant species grow on the Antarctic continent?
Two
Antarctic hair grass and Antarctic pearlwort grow on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Q 17Why does the Antarctic tundra lack large land mammals, unlike the Arctic?
Isolation from the other continents
Seals and penguins use the shore, and rabbits and cats have been introduced to some subantarctic islands.
Q 18What is the name for the stunted, wind-twisted forest found at the edge of alpine tundra?
Krummholz
The German word describes the crooked wood of the forest-tundra ecotone.
Q 19At its upper edge, alpine tundra ends at which boundary?
The snow line
Above it, snow and ice persist right through the summer.
Q 20For how long must ground stay below 0 °C to count as permafrost?
Two years or more
The oldest permafrost has been continuously frozen for around 700,000 years.
Norilsk and Yakutsk
Both are in Russia, and buildings there stand on piles so their heat does not thaw the ground.
Q 25What are the large ice-cored mounds, up to 70 m high, that form in permafrost regions called?
Pingos
Smaller peat mounds of the same kind are called palsas.
Q 26Which two greenhouse gases are released when thawing permafrost lets ancient biomass decompose?
Carbon dioxide and methane
The emissions are a climate feedback loop, though not thought large enough to cause runaway warming.
Q 27The muskox is most closely related to which animals?
Sheep and goats
Its genus name Ovibos means sheep-ox in Latin.
Q 28What does the muskox's Inuktitut name, umingmak, mean?
The bearded one
Its English name comes from the strong odour males emit during the rut.
Q 29Muskoxen introduced to which European country wandered over the border to found a small herd in Sweden?
Norway
They were also reintroduced to Alaska, Yukon and Siberia after dying out there.
Q 30The Arctic fox's tail is roughly what fraction of its body length?
One third
Its fur provides the best insulation of any mammal, and the winter coat is twice the length of the summer coat.