Tundra Trivia
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45 free Tundra trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 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 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What prevents trees from growing in a tundra?
Cold and a very short summer
Cold and a very short summer: tree seedlings barely survive near the tree line, so even a run of warmer summers can shift where the trees stop.
Q 02From which language does the word 'tundra' come?
Russian
Russian: English took the word from Russian, which may have borrowed it from a Sámi word said to mean an elevated wasteland or a marshy plain.
Q 03What are inuksuit, which Inuit build across the treeless Arctic tundra?
Stone landmarks
Stone landmarks: they mark routes, hunting grounds and food caches, and the human-shaped stone figure often called an inuksuk is really an inunnguaq.
Q 04Which tundra animal can let its body temperature fall below freezing while it hibernates?
Arctic ground squirrel
Arctic ground squirrel: males also stash food in their burrows in late summer, so they have something to eat when they wake in spring.
Q 05'Reindeer moss', a staple winter food of tundra herds, is actually what kind of organism?
A lichen
A lichen: it is really a fungus living in partnership with algae, so despite its name it isn't a moss or even a plant.
Q 06Which forest belt borders the Arctic tundra to the south?
The taiga
The taiga: many wild reindeer herds leave the open tundra to spend the winter among its trees.
Q 07What grows in permafrost cracks each winter to build the tundra's large polygon networks?
Ice wedges
Ice wedges form when intense cold cracks the ground and spring meltwater refreezes in the crack; year after year the wedges join into polygon patterns.
Q 08Why is desert-dry Arctic tundra boggy in summer?
Frozen ground stops drainage
Frozen ground stops drainage: meltwater can't soak down past the permafrost, and evaporation is too low to dry it out, so marshes and ponds form.
Q 09Which Ice Age giants have been found preserved in Siberian permafrost?
Woolly mammoths
Woolly mammoths: soft tissue from those carcasses shows scientists what the animals looked like, and DNA from their hair helped map the mammoth genome.
Q 10Which cold-blooded animals are few or absent in the tundra?
Frogs and lizards
Frogs and lizards are few or absent because it's too cold for them, yet insects such as mosquitoes do live there.
Q 11Which bird migrates between its Arctic nesting grounds and the Antarctic every year?
Arctic tern
Arctic tern: by chasing the sun from one end of the world to the other, it lives through two summers every year.
Q 12Which largely tundra region of Siberia has produced most of the country's natural gas?
Yamalo-Nenets
Yamalo-Nenets: part of its gas is chilled into liquid and shipped out by tankers built to break through Arctic ice.
Q 13In Köppen's system, tundra is one of two polar climates; what's the other?
Ice cap
Ice cap: no month there averages above freezing, which is why most of Antarctica and Greenland lie buried under ice sheets.
Q 21Which two large cities are the only ones in the world built on continuous permafrost?
Norilsk and Yakutsk
Norilsk and Yakutsk: heated buildings there stand on piles with air space beneath, so their warmth doesn't thaw the permafrost.
Q 22What are the large ice-cored mounds, up to 70 m high, that form in permafrost regions called?
Pingos
Pingos grow as groundwater under pressure freezes into an expanding ice core, and scientists borrowed their name from an Inuit word.
Q 23Which two greenhouse gases does decomposing biomass release as permafrost thaws?
Carbon dioxide and methane
Q 14Which Canadian territory, mostly tundra, was carved out of the Northwest Territories in 1999?
Nunavut
Nunavut: Inuit, who make up most of its people, won the new territory through a land-claims agreement with the federal government.
Q 15Why does the Antarctic tundra lack large land mammals, unlike the Arctic?
Isolation from the other continents
Isolation from the other continents, with Antarctica cut off by the Southern Ocean for tens of millions of years, kept land mammals from reaching it; seals and penguins use only the shore.
Q 16What is the name for the stunted, wind-twisted forest found at the edge of alpine tundra?
Krummholz
Krummholz, German for 'crooked wood', grows low and twisted because freezing winds kill the shoots that poke above the shelter of rocks or snow.
Q 17At its upper edge, alpine tundra ends at which boundary?
The snow line
The snow line: above it more snow falls each year than can melt, so snow can pile up and slowly turn into glacier ice.
Q 18Ground must stay frozen for at least how long in a row to count as permafrost?
Two years
Two years: despite the name, permafrost needn't be ancient, though much of it has stayed frozen for many thousands of years.
Q 19Which small alpine-tundra mammal dries plants in the sun and stores them to eat in winter?
The pika
The pika: it doesn't hibernate, so it lives through the winter on the 'hay' it gathered and dried in summer.
Q 20What is the name for the seasonally thawing ground above permafrost in which plant roots can grow?
Active layer
Active layer is the name for the top of the ground that thaws each summer and refreezes in winter; only there can plant roots take hold above the permafrost.
Carbon dioxide and methane escape as the thawed remains rot, and the extra warming they cause thaws still more permafrost in a feedback loop.
Q 24Despite its name, the muskox is most closely related to which animals?
Sheep and goats
Sheep and goats: when wolves threaten, muskoxen line up or form a circle with their horns facing out and the calves kept in the middle.
Q 25What does the muskox's Inuktitut name, umingmak, mean?
The bearded one
The bearded one is the meaning of umingmak, a reference to the muskox's long, shaggy guard hairs; the English name refers instead to the strong odour of rutting males.
Q 26Muskoxen introduced to which European country wandered over the border to found a small herd in Sweden?
Norway
Norway received muskoxen from Greenland in the Dovrefjell mountains; in 1971 a few wandered across the border into Sweden's Härjedalen and founded a small herd there.
Q 27What does an Arctic fox's bushy tail do in the cold?
Keeps it warm
Keeps it warm: a sleeping fox curls up behind its brush, and when prey runs short in winter it trails polar bears to eat their leftovers.
Q 28The blue colour morph of the Arctic fox is most common in which country?
Iceland
Iceland is where the blue morph dominates, making up the majority of the island's Arctic foxes, whereas the white morph prevails almost everywhere else.
Q 29Reindeer are unique among deer for what reason?
Females may grow antlers
Females may grow antlers, and pregnant cows keep theirs until they give birth in spring, months after the biggest bulls have shed their own.
Q 30What is the wild Rangifer tarandus called in North American English?
Caribou
Caribou came into English through French from an Algonquian word, probably Mi'kmaq, describing how the animal paws through snow to feed.