Venomous Snakes
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50 free Venomous Snakes trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Only a minority of the world's snakes are venomous, yet those few hundred species shape how people feel about all the rest. Harmless snakes are killed every year because they look like dangerous ones, and dangerous ones are picked up because they look harmless. Telling the two apart is a practical skill as well as a good test of what you know. This quiz mixes identification with natural history. Some questions ask which snake in a line-up is the venomous one, or which familiar species is a harmless mimic. Others cover how fangs and venom work, the cobras, vipers, rattlesnakes and sea snakes that hold the records, where venomous snakes do and do not live, and the story of antivenom and snakebite first aid. A few look at venomous snakes in history, myth and popular culture. It suits reptile keepers, hikers, students and anyone who has ever frozen at a rustle in the grass. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing more about these animals than when you started. It is a trivia quiz, not a field guide: never handle a wild snake to check an answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Folk rhymes say a North American coral snake is the banded one whose red rings touch which colour?
Yellow
Yellow rings separate the red and black ones on the eastern coral snake, so red always meets yellow. On its harmless mimics, the red rings border black ones instead.
Q 02A rattlesnake adds a new segment to the rattle on its tail each time it does what?
Sheds its skin
Each time a rattlesnake sheds its skin a segment is added, and that can happen several times a year, so counting the segments does not reveal the animal's age.
Q 03Which animal, the cobra-killing hero of Kipling's Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, has cell receptors that resist snake venom?
Mongoose
The mongoose has acetylcholine receptors altered so that a cobra's toxin cannot bind to them, a mutation known in only a handful of mammal groups.
Q 04Which African snake, whose name Kobe Bryant took as a nickname, can move at up to 16 km/h?
Black mamba
The black mamba is the longest venomous snake in Africa, and Bryant took the name from an assassin's code name in the Kill Bill films.
Q 05Harmless corn snakes are often killed because they resemble which venomous pit viper of the eastern United States?
Copperhead
The copperhead often freezes instead of slithering away when approached, so many bites happen when people unknowingly step on or near one.
Q 06Which venomous pit viper of the southeastern United States is also widely known as the water moccasin?
Cottonmouth
The cottonmouth is one of the world's few semiaquatic vipers, and it is named for the white lining of the mouth that it gapes to show an intruder.
Q 07What do doctors call a strike by a venomous snake that releases no venom at all?
A dry bite
A dry bite can still be painful and cause swelling, and by some estimates about half of all snakebites deliver no venom.
Q 08A threatened cobra forms its famous hood by spreading which bones in its neck?
Its ribs
A cobra swings its ribs outward to flatten the neck into a hood, and it usually rears up and hisses while it does so.
Q 09Which zigzag-backed snake is the only venomous species native to Great Britain?
Common adder
The common adder is found across Britain but is absent from Ireland, and although its bite can be very painful it is rarely fatal.
Q 10Among North American snakes long thought harmless, which familiar garden species actually makes a mild venom?
Garter snake
The garter snake makes a mild venom, discovered in the early 2000s, but it has no effective way of delivering it and cannot seriously injure a person.
Q 11Which banner of the American Revolution shows a coiled timber rattlesnake above a warning not to tread on it?
Gadsden flag
The Gadsden flag was designed in 1775 by Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina, at a time when the rattlesnake stood for the unity of the Thirteen Colonies.
Q 12Biologists call a snake venomous instead of poisonous because it delivers its toxin in which way?
By injecting it
By injecting it through fangs, a snake actively delivers its toxin into a wound, whereas a poison works passively when it is swallowed, inhaled or touched.
Q 13Which Asian snake is placed in the genus Ophiophagus, named for its habit of hunting and eating other snakes?
King cobra
Q 21Which US state is home to more kinds of rattlesnake than any other, with 13 species?
Arizona
Arizona's total reflects where rattlesnakes do best: the large majority of species live in the dry American Southwest and Mexico.
Q 22The venom of elapids such as cobras and coral snakes mainly attacks which part of the body?
Nerves
Nerves are the main target of elapid venom, which can cause a creeping paralysis that begins with drooping eyelids and ends by stopping the breathing muscles.
Q 23Which heavy-bodied African snake has the longest fangs of any venomous species, at about five centimetres?
Gaboon viper
The Gaboon viper also produces more venom than any other snake, and it hangs on to its prey with those fangs instead of striking and letting go.
The king cobra chiefly hunts other snakes, including its own kind, and despite its name it is not a true cobra of the genus Naja.
Q 14Antivenom, often purified from the blood of horses that have been given venom, is made up of which proteins?
Antibodies
Antibodies form in the horse after small doses, on the same principle as a vaccine, except that the immunity is raised in the animal and then passed to the patient.
Q 15Which harmless snake of the southeastern United States mimics the bright bands of the venomous coral snake?
Scarlet kingsnake
Scarlet kingsnakes stood in for coral snakes on screen in the 2006 film Snakes on a Plane, and unlike the real thing they have red snouts.
Q 16The 'Big Four', among them Russell's viper and the spectacled cobra, cause most serious snakebites in which country?
India
India has a single widely available antivenom that was made to neutralise the venom of all four species at once.
Q 17Which of these northern US states has no venomous snakes, while the other three all have native rattlesnakes?
Alaska
Alaska has none, yet timber rattlesnakes survive as far north as southern Minnesota and are listed as endangered in Vermont and Connecticut.
Q 18On which island does the Book of Acts say a viper fastened onto the shipwrecked apostle Paul and left him unharmed?
Malta
Malta's islanders, the account says, expected Paul to swell up or drop dead, and when nothing happened they decided he was a god.
Q 19The 'fierce' in fierce snake, another name for which Australian species, describes its venom rather than its temper?
Inland taipan
The inland taipan has the most toxic venom of any snake tested on laboratory mice, yet it is shy and placid and lives where it rarely meets people.
Q 20Which of these South American snakes is a non-venomous constrictor rather than a venomous pit viper?
Green anaconda
The green anaconda, like all boas, has no venom: it strikes at prey that comes to the water's edge, coils around it and suffocates it.
Q 24Which rear-fanged African snake killed herpetologist Karl Schmidt in 1957 after he doubted its bite could be fatal?
Boomslang
The boomslang has venom that stops blood from clotting, and Schmidt kept detailed notes on his own symptoms almost until he died.
Q 25Among Australia's snakes, which species found around Sydney and Brisbane causes the most snakebite deaths?
Eastern brown snake
The eastern brown snake hunts house mice, which draws it to farmland and the outskirts of cities, where it meets people far more often than shyer species do.
Q 26Which species is the largest rattlesnake in the world?
Eastern diamondback
The eastern diamondback is also one of the heaviest venomous snakes anywhere: one shot in 1946 measured 7.8 feet long and weighed 15.4 kg.
Q 27Among harmless North American snakes, which one imitates a rattlesnake by coiling, puffing up and vibrating its tail?
Gopher snake
The gopher snake is convincing enough to be often mistaken for a prairie rattlesnake, though it has no rattle and usually strikes with its mouth closed.
Q 28The hypertension drug captopril was modelled on a venom peptide from a pit viper native to which country?
Brazil
Brazil's jararaca has a venom peptide that blocks the enzyme known as ACE, and captopril, the first ACE inhibitor, was built to copy it.
Q 29In 2017 the World Health Organization added snakebite envenoming to which official category of illness?
Neglected tropical diseases
Listing it among neglected tropical diseases recognised that bites fall hardest on rural parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Q 30Which first-aid method, devised by Australian Struan Sutherland, slows venom moving through the lymphatic system?
Pressure immobilisation
Pressure immobilisation means firmly bandaging the bitten limb and then splinting it, because muscle movement is what pumps venom along the lymph vessels.