Zebra Trivia
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49 free Zebra trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This zebra trivia quiz covers the three living species (plains, mountain and Grévy's), what colour a zebra actually is underneath, why the best evidence says stripes are for keeping biting flies off, how harems and bachelor herds work, how a zebra escapes a lion it cannot outrun, and the 500 km plains-zebra migration between Namibia and Botswana. It also covers zebras and people: the Greeks' 'horse tiger', the Portuguese origin of the word, Baibars' and Jahangir's diplomatic zebras, Queen Charlotte's ill-tempered wedding present, the French president who got a species named after him, Walter Rothschild's zebra carriage, the extinct quagga and the Quagga Project, the world's first zebra crossing in Slough, and Marty from Madagascar. Conservation questions cover the IUCN status of each species. Every question was verified against a primary reference (mainly the Wikipedia articles on zebras, the quagga and the zebra crossing) and carries a citation. Try our horse and Africa quizzes next.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which comedian voices Marty, the zebra who longs to leave the Central Park Zoo, in the Madagascar films?
Chris Rock
Chris Rock's Marty sets the whole story going: bored on his tenth birthday, he slips out of the zoo to find the wild, and his friends' attempt to fetch him back gets them all shipped out to sea.
Q 02Zebras belong to the odd-toed hoofed mammals, along with horses, tapirs and which other animals?
Rhinos
Rhinos walk on three toes and a zebra on a single one, and in both the weight centres on the middle toe. Even-toed animals such as camels and pigs share the load between two.
Q 03What colour is a zebra's skin under its coat?
Black
The coat looks white with black stripes because unstriped areas like the belly are white, but the skin itself is black.
Q 04Which explanation for zebra stripes was backed by a 2019 experiment that dressed horses in striped coats?
They deter biting flies
They deter biting flies: horseflies approached striped and plain coats alike, but failed to slow down in time to land on the stripes, so far fewer settled.
Q 05What colour are zebra foals' stripes at birth?
Brown and white
Brown and white is how a foal starts out, in soft, fuzzy fur. The brown stripes darken as it grows.
Q 06The ancient Greeks and Romans named the zebra after which two animals?
Horse and tiger
Horse and tiger made the Greek 'hippotigris', and the word is still in use: Hippotigris is the scientific name of the subgenus that holds the living zebras.
Q 07Which animal named for the zebra has invaded the Great Lakes since the 1980s?
Zebra mussel
Zebra mussels probably crossed the Atlantic in ships' ballast water, and power plants now spend heavily clearing their striped shells out of clogged water intakes.
Q 08In the Allied radio alphabet of World War II, 'Zebra' stood for Z; which word replaced it in today's NATO alphabet?
Zulu
Zulu came in with a 1951 civil aviation alphabet built from sounds common to English, French and Spanish, and reached the military when NATO adopted its own version in 1956.
Q 09The genus Equus arose on which continent, where its horses later died out?
North America
North America is where the horse family grew up. Some of its members spread to the Old World, and the branch that settled in Africa became the zebras.
Q 10What is a cross between a zebra and a horse called?
A zorse
A zonkey has a donkey parent and a zoni a pony; zebroids are often born sterile and dwarfed.
Q 11In medical slang, a 'zebra' is what kind of diagnosis?
A rare one
A rare one: students learn that hoofbeats usually mean horses, so common illnesses come first. People with the rare Ehlers-Danlos syndromes have adopted the zebra as their emblem, because sometimes it really is one.
Q 12Which naturalist wrote in 1871 that a female zebra would accept a male ass only once he was painted with stripes?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin borrowed the story from the surgeon John Hunter for The Descent of Man, as evidence that animals choose their mates by appearance.
Q 13To test whether stripes keep zebras cool, a 2018 experiment wrapped what in zebra hides and left them in the sun?
Water-filled metal barrels
Q 21How do male Grévy's zebras mark their large territories?
With dung piles
With dung piles: the most dominant stallions stake out the ground around waterholes, which every mare with a young foal has to visit.
Q 22What can a zebra foal do within an hour of its birth?
Run
Run it must: the herd keeps moving to find food and water, and a mother cannot leave her newborn behind.
Q 23How does a zebra mare make sure her newborn learns her stripe pattern?
She keeps other zebras away
She keeps other zebras away for a short time after the birth. Once the foal can tell its mother by her stripes, the two go back to the group.
Water-filled metal barrels stood in for zebra bodies. After four months outdoors, those in striped hides had warmed just as much inside as plain grey ones, so the stripes did no cooling.
Q 14The logic puzzle known as the Zebra Puzzle, which ends by asking who owns the zebra, is popularly credited to which scientist?
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein is said to have set it as a boy, but there is no evidence that he did. A well-known version ran in Life International in 1962, which printed the names of several hundred readers who solved it.
Q 15How long can a Grévy's zebra survive without water?
Almost a week
Almost a week is the upper estimate, and five days by other counts, which suits the dry scrub of Kenya and Ethiopia. Given the chance, though, a Grévy's zebra still drinks every day.
Q 16As 'pioneer grazers', zebras mow down tall, tough grass and so open up the short, rich growth beneath for which animals?
Wildebeest
Wildebeest need the short, leafy grass that the zebras uncover. A zebra's simpler gut gets less from each mouthful, so it copes with the coarse stems on top by eating far more of them.
Q 17Which predator hunts zebras most?
Lions
Lions are the zebra's main predator. A zebra can land a kick hard enough to injure one, but once caught it rarely fights its way free.
Q 18How do zebras escape predators that can outrun them?
By sideways turning when the cat is close
By sideways turning when the cat is close behind, a zebra uses its one edge: a 2018 tracking study found that at the lower speeds of a real chase, prey can turn as sharply as their bodies allow.
Q 19What is the stable family group of most zebra species called?
A harem
A harem is one stallion with several mares and their foals, and it outlasts him: when a new stallion takes over, the mares stay together as a group.
Q 20When a plains zebra family travels, who leads?
The top-ranking mare and her foals
The top-ranking mare and her foals walk in front and the other mares follow by rank. The stallion brings up the rear, where he can turn and face whatever is chasing the family.
Q 24Where do young Grévy's zebras stay while their mothers go to drink?
In 'kindergartens' minded by the local male
In 'kindergartens' minded by the local male, foals wait out the long walk to water. He guards even those that are not his, because it keeps their mothers in his territory.
Q 25Which striped-legged forest animal, sometimes called the zebra giraffe, is the giraffe's only close living relative?
Okapi
Okapi stripes are thought to help a calf follow its mother through the dark rainforest, while the long, dark tongue and the male's skin-covered horns give away the giraffe kinship.
Q 26The plains zebra is the national animal of which southern African country?
Botswana
Botswana chose the zebra because no tribe claimed it as a symbol and because its two-tone coat echoes the flag's message of racial harmony. Two zebras hold up the national coat of arms.
Q 27Sheena, the comic-book heroine depicted riding a zebra, was created as a female version of which hero?
Tarzan
Tarzan was the model, but no apes raised Sheena: in her original story she came to Africa as an explorer's young daughter and was brought up by the witch doctor who had accidentally killed him.
Q 28Which actor voices Stripes, the zebra who dreams of racing thoroughbreds, in the 2005 film Racing Stripes?
Frankie Muniz
Frankie Muniz's Stripes is a circus foal left behind in a thunderstorm and raised on a Kentucky farm beside a racetrack, where he grows up convinced that he is a racehorse.
Q 29Carel Weight's painting of a zebra escaping a zoo during an air raid was based on a real incident at which zoo?
London Zoo
London Zoo's zebra house was hit by bombs in September 1940 and a zebra bolted. Weight painted the chase as four comic-strip panels, which the war artists' committee bought.
Q 30In the early 1400s, zebras from the Somali coast were presented to the emperor of which country?
China
China's Ming court received them as tribute along with ostriches, giraffes and other exotic beasts, all brought home by the treasure fleets of the admiral Zheng He, and the arrivals caused a sensation.