Fun Facts Quiz
Cube-shaped poop, blue blood and a 38-minute war: 15 facts that sound fake but are completely true.
Which is the only mammal capable of true, sustained flight?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Bat
Bats are the only mammals that truly fly, flapping wings made of skin stretched between elongated finger bones. Flying squirrels and sugar gliders only glide from tree to tree.
There are more than 1,400 bat species, making up roughly one in five of all mammal species on Earth.
What colour is an octopus's blood?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Blue
Octopus blood is blue because it uses the copper-based protein haemocyanin to carry oxygen around the body, rather than the iron-based haemoglobin that gives human blood its red colour.
Copper-based blood works better than iron in cold, low-oxygen water, which is one reason octopuses thrive in deep seas.
Botanically speaking, a peanut is not a nut. To which plant group does it belong?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Legumes
Peanuts are legumes, in the same family as peas, beans and lentils, and they grow underground in pods rather than on trees like true nuts such as hazelnuts.
Almonds, cashews and pistachios are not true nuts either; they are seeds from drupes, fruits with a fleshy outer layer.
Which Australian animal produces cube-shaped droppings?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Wombat
Wombats produce distinctive cube-shaped droppings that they use to mark territory, and the shape stops them rolling away. Uneven stretching of the intestine wall creates the flat sides.
The researchers who worked out the mechanism, Patricia Yang and David Hu, won the 2019 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics.
In 1932, the Australian military waged a failed campaign, armed with machine guns, against which bird?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Emu
The so-called Emu War saw soldiers sent to Western Australia to cull around 20,000 emus damaging wheat farms. The fast, scattering birds proved almost impossible to hit and the operation was abandoned.
Emus can sprint at around 50 km/h (31 mph) and are the second largest living bird after the ostrich.
Which human organ can regrow to its full size from as little as a tenth of its original mass?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Liver
The liver is the only human internal organ that regenerates this way; just 10 percent of the original tissue is enough for it to grow back to full size, which makes living-donor liver transplants possible.
In healthy patients the liver can regrow up to half its mass within about 30 days of surgery.
Which animal has fingerprints so similar to a human's that they are hard to tell apart even under an electron microscope?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Koala
Koalas have ridged fingerprints that are extremely hard to distinguish from human prints, even under an electron microscope. The ridges evolved separately to help them grip branches.
Koalas sleep for up to 20 hours a day because their eucalyptus diet is so low in energy.
Which famous landmark grows several centimetres taller in summer as its metal structure expands in the heat?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower's wrought iron expands in hot weather, making it as much as 15 cm (6 inches) taller in summer, and its top can lean up to 18 cm (7 inches) away from the sun.
The tower was meant to be dismantled after 20 years but was saved because it proved useful as a radio antenna.
Fredric Baur, the chemist who invented the stackable crisp tube in the 1960s, asked for some of his ashes to be buried in what?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
A Pringles can
Baur designed the saddle-shaped crisp and its tube for Procter & Gamble and asked to be buried in one. When he died in 2008, his children placed part of his ashes in an Original flavour Pringles can.
Baur also worked on freeze-dried ice cream and other food technologies during his long career as an organic chemist at Procter & Gamble.
Roughly how far does the Moon drift away from Earth each year?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
3.8 centimetres
The Moon recedes about 3.8 cm (1.5 inches) a year because of tidal interactions with Earth, a rate measured precisely by bouncing lasers off reflectors left by Apollo astronauts.
As the Moon drifts away, Earth's rotation slows slightly, so days are getting longer by about 2 milliseconds per century.
Britain's 1896 war against which sultanate is recorded as the shortest war in history, lasting under an hour?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Zanzibar
The Anglo-Zanzibar War on 27 August 1896 lasted roughly 38 minutes. British warships shelled the palace after a new sultan took power without approval, and he surrendered almost immediately.
The defeated sultan, Khalid bin Barghash, fled to the German consulate and was later captured by the British in 1916.
In which year was the video game company Nintendo founded?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
1889
Nintendo was founded in Kyoto in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to make hanafuda playing cards. It tried taxis, instant rice and love hotels before settling on toys and video games.
Nintendo's first home console, the Color TV-Game, was released in Japan in 1977, nearly 90 years after the company began.
Which of these living things appeared on Earth before the first trees?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Sharks
The earliest shark fossils are around 450 million years old, while the first true trees appeared roughly 385 million years ago, so sharks predate forests by tens of millions of years.
Sharks also predate dinosaurs by around 200 million years and have survived all five mass extinctions.
Which common pet is unable to taste sweetness?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Cat
Cats lack a working version of the Tas1r2 gene, which codes for half of the sweet taste receptor, so they cannot detect sugar. This suits a diet of almost pure meat.
Dogs do have a sweet receptor, which is why they beg for fruit and sweets while cats generally ignore them.
Which university was already teaching students more than two centuries before the Aztecs founded their capital Tenochtitlan in 1325?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Oxford
Teaching existed at Oxford by 1096 and the university grew rapidly after 1167, long before Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325. Heidelberg opened in 1386, Edinburgh in 1583 and Harvard in 1636.
The University of Bologna, founded in 1088, is usually regarded as the oldest university in continuous operation in the world.
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All General Knowledge quizzes →About the Fun Facts Quiz
Some facts sound like lies. Wombats really do produce cube-shaped droppings, the Moon is drifting away from us a few centimetres a year, and Australia once sent soldiers with machine guns to fight a flock of birds and lost. Every one of these is true, and every one has been checked.
These 15 questions cover animals, the human body, space, history and a famous Paris landmark that grows in the summer heat. There are no made-up viral myths here, just the facts that make people say that cannot be right. Easy questions come first, and the last few will surprise even the most dedicated collectors of trivia.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Medium. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
Are all the fun facts in this quiz true?
Yes. Every fact was checked against reliable sources before being included, and well-known viral myths were deliberately left out.
What topics do the questions cover?
Animals, the human body, space, history and inventions, from koala fingerprints and cat taste buds to the shortest war in history.
Is the Fun Facts Quiz suitable for kids?
Yes. The questions are family friendly and work well for classrooms, car journeys and family quiz nights.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- Which is the only mammal capable of true, sustained flight?
Bat Bats are the only mammals that truly fly, flapping wings made of skin stretched between elongated finger bones. Flying squirrels and sugar gliders only glide from tree to tree. There are more than 1,400 bat species, making up roughly one in five of all mammal species on Earth. - What colour is an octopus's blood?
Blue Octopus blood is blue because it uses the copper-based protein haemocyanin to carry oxygen around the body, rather than the iron-based haemoglobin that gives human blood its red colour. Copper-based blood works better than iron in cold, low-oxygen water, which is one reason octopuses thrive in deep seas. - Botanically speaking, a peanut is not a nut. To which plant group does it belong?
Legumes Peanuts are legumes, in the same family as peas, beans and lentils, and they grow underground in pods rather than on trees like true nuts such as hazelnuts. Almonds, cashews and pistachios are not true nuts either; they are seeds from drupes, fruits with a fleshy outer layer. - Which Australian animal produces cube-shaped droppings?
Wombat Wombats produce distinctive cube-shaped droppings that they use to mark territory, and the shape stops them rolling away. Uneven stretching of the intestine wall creates the flat sides. The researchers who worked out the mechanism, Patricia Yang and David Hu, won the 2019 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics. - In 1932, the Australian military waged a failed campaign, armed with machine guns, against which bird?
Emu The so-called Emu War saw soldiers sent to Western Australia to cull around 20,000 emus damaging wheat farms. The fast, scattering birds proved almost impossible to hit and the operation was abandoned. Emus can sprint at around 50 km/h (31 mph) and are the second largest living bird after the ostrich. - Which human organ can regrow to its full size from as little as a tenth of its original mass?
Liver The liver is the only human internal organ that regenerates this way; just 10 percent of the original tissue is enough for it to grow back to full size, which makes living-donor liver transplants possible. In healthy patients the liver can regrow up to half its mass within about 30 days of surgery. - Which animal has fingerprints so similar to a human's that they are hard to tell apart even under an electron microscope?
Koala Koalas have ridged fingerprints that are extremely hard to distinguish from human prints, even under an electron microscope. The ridges evolved separately to help them grip branches. Koalas sleep for up to 20 hours a day because their eucalyptus diet is so low in energy. - Which famous landmark grows several centimetres taller in summer as its metal structure expands in the heat?
Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower's wrought iron expands in hot weather, making it as much as 15 cm (6 inches) taller in summer, and its top can lean up to 18 cm (7 inches) away from the sun. The tower was meant to be dismantled after 20 years but was saved because it proved useful as a radio antenna. - Fredric Baur, the chemist who invented the stackable crisp tube in the 1960s, asked for some of his ashes to be buried in what?
A Pringles can Baur designed the saddle-shaped crisp and its tube for Procter & Gamble and asked to be buried in one. When he died in 2008, his children placed part of his ashes in an Original flavour Pringles can. Baur also worked on freeze-dried ice cream and other food technologies during his long career as an organic chemist at Procter & Gamble. - Roughly how far does the Moon drift away from Earth each year?
3.8 centimetres The Moon recedes about 3.8 cm (1.5 inches) a year because of tidal interactions with Earth, a rate measured precisely by bouncing lasers off reflectors left by Apollo astronauts. As the Moon drifts away, Earth's rotation slows slightly, so days are getting longer by about 2 milliseconds per century. - Britain's 1896 war against which sultanate is recorded as the shortest war in history, lasting under an hour?
Zanzibar The Anglo-Zanzibar War on 27 August 1896 lasted roughly 38 minutes. British warships shelled the palace after a new sultan took power without approval, and he surrendered almost immediately. The defeated sultan, Khalid bin Barghash, fled to the German consulate and was later captured by the British in 1916. - In which year was the video game company Nintendo founded?
1889 Nintendo was founded in Kyoto in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to make hanafuda playing cards. It tried taxis, instant rice and love hotels before settling on toys and video games. Nintendo's first home console, the Color TV-Game, was released in Japan in 1977, nearly 90 years after the company began. - Which of these living things appeared on Earth before the first trees?
Sharks The earliest shark fossils are around 450 million years old, while the first true trees appeared roughly 385 million years ago, so sharks predate forests by tens of millions of years. Sharks also predate dinosaurs by around 200 million years and have survived all five mass extinctions. - Which common pet is unable to taste sweetness?
Cat Cats lack a working version of the Tas1r2 gene, which codes for half of the sweet taste receptor, so they cannot detect sugar. This suits a diet of almost pure meat. Dogs do have a sweet receptor, which is why they beg for fruit and sweets while cats generally ignore them. - Which university was already teaching students more than two centuries before the Aztecs founded their capital Tenochtitlan in 1325?
Oxford Teaching existed at Oxford by 1096 and the university grew rapidly after 1167, long before Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325. Heidelberg opened in 1386, Edinburgh in 1583 and Harvard in 1636. The University of Bologna, founded in 1088, is usually regarded as the oldest university in continuous operation in the world.
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