• 85 questions

Animal Would You Rather Questions Built on Real Animal Facts

Press a side to vote on two real animal talents, then read both facts in the list under the deck.

Animal Would You Rather Questions Built on Real Animal Facts

Would you rather…

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All 85 questions

Speed and strength 9

  • Would you rather hover like a hummingbird or soar like an Andean condor? Hummingbirds hover on wingbeats that run from about 12 per second in the largest species to 99 in small ones. The Andean condor flaps very rarely and rides thermals to stay aloft.
  • Would you rather leap like a red kangaroo or spring like an impala? Red kangaroos reach around 60 km/h, and a male can cover 8 to 9 m in one leap. An impala can leap up to 3 m high, and leaping is part of how it escapes predators.
  • Would you rather pull like a dung beetle or spin silk like a spider? A male Onthophagus taurus dung beetle can pull 1,141 times its own body weight. Weight for weight, spider silk is stronger than steel, though not as strong as Kevlar.
  • Would you rather punch like a mantis shrimp or snap like a pistol shrimp? A mantis shrimp's club strikes at 23 m/s from a standing start. A pistol shrimp's claw snap can create a cavitation bubble that shoots out at 25 m/s.
  • Would you rather run like an ostrich or swim like a gentoo penguin? The common ostrich runs at about 70 km/h in short bursts, the fastest land speed of any two-legged animal. Gentoos are the fastest underwater swimmers of all penguins.
  • Would you rather run on water like a basilisk or walk up a wall like a gecko? The common basilisk is known for running on the surface of water. About 60% of gecko species have adhesive toepads, which let them climb smooth and vertical surfaces.
  • Would you rather sprint like a cheetah or dive like a peregrine falcon? The cheetah is the fastest land animal, running at 93 to 104 km/h. Some sources say a peregrine falcon passes 200 mph in its hunting dive, which is called a stoop.
  • Would you rather sprint like a greyhound or keep up the pace like a pronghorn? Greyhounds reach peak speeds of at least 69 km/h. The pronghorn is the fastest land mammal in the Americas and can run 35 mph for 4 miles.
  • Would you rather swing like a gibbon or climb cliffs like a mountain goat? Gibbons swing from branch to branch at up to 55 km/h and cross gaps of up to 15 m. Mountain goats are sure-footed climbers, often seen on sheer rock faces.

Super senses 10

  • Would you rather feel with a star nose like a mole or feel with whiskers like a seal? The star-nosed mole's snout has 22 appendages covered in tiny touch organs. Seals and sea lions have an advanced tactile system in their whiskers.
  • Would you rather find home by magnetism like a pigeon or find home by smell like a salmon? Homing pigeons return to the nest using magnetoreception, a sense for the Earth's magnetic field. Salmon homing has been shown to depend on olfactory memory, the memory of a smell.
  • Would you rather find lunch by echo like a bat or find lunch by touch like a raccoon? Many bats find prey in the dark by echolocation. The most important sense for a raccoon is touch, and its front paws are hyper sensitive.
  • Would you rather have a tongue like a giraffe or have a tongue like a woodpecker? A giraffe's tongue is about 45 cm long and can grasp leaves. A woodpecker has a long, sticky tongue, and its very long tongue bone winds around the outside of its skull.
  • Would you rather have eyes like an eagle or have ears like an owl? Eagle eyesight is estimated at 4 to 8 times stronger than the average human's. An owl's facial disc focuses sounds onto its asymmetrically placed ears.
  • Would you rather have huge eyes like a tarsier or have compound eyes like a dragonfly? Each tarsier eyeball is about 16 mm across, as large as or larger than its whole brain. A dragonfly's compound eyes have nearly 24,000 units, called ommatidia, each.
  • Would you rather move each eye alone like a chameleon or turn your head like an owl? Each chameleon eye pivots and focuses independently, so it can watch two different objects at once. Owls can rotate their heads and necks as much as 270 degrees.
  • Would you rather see ultraviolet like a bee or sense heat like a pit viper? Bees pick out flowers by ultraviolet patterns on the petals. A pit viper has an infrared-sensing pit between the eye and the nostril on each side of its head.
  • Would you rather sense electricity like a platypus or zap like an electric eel? A platypus finds prey by electroreception, with receptors arranged in stripes on its bill. An electric eel can deliver shocks of up to 860 volts.
  • Would you rather smell like a bloodhound or taste with your feet like a butterfly? Bloodhounds can follow trails many hours, and even several days, old. A butterfly has taste receptors on its palps and on its feet.

Sleep and lazy days 9

  • Would you rather doze all day like a house cat or stay up all night like a hedgehog? Cats usually sleep between 12 and 16 hours a day. Hedgehogs are adapted to a nocturnal way of life.
  • Would you rather fly ten months nonstop like a swift or stand on one leg like a flamingo? Common swifts may spend up to ten months in continuous flight. Flamingos usually stand on one leg with the other tucked beneath the body.
  • Would you rather hang around like a sloth or bask like a marine iguana? Sloths spend most of their lives hanging upside down in the trees. Marine iguanas bask on rocky shores after visiting the relatively cold water.
  • Would you rather nap in kelp like a sea otter or in a slime cocoon like a parrotfish? Sea otters rest together in groups called rafts and may wrap themselves in kelp so they do not drift out to sea. Some parrotfish secrete a mucus cocoon around themselves at night.
  • Would you rather rest half your brain like a dolphin or nap in mid-air like a frigatebird? Dolphins can sleep with one half of the brain at a time. A study of great frigatebirds found they sleep in flight, usually with one brain half, for less than an hour and always at night.
  • Would you rather sleep 20 hours like a koala or sleep 4 hours like an elephant? Koalas sleep up to twenty hours a day. Elephants average 3 to 4 hours of sleep per day.
  • Would you rather sleep underwater like a hippo or sleep upright like a sperm whale? A hippo can sleep while submerged, surfacing to breathe seemingly without waking. Sperm whales may sleep for short periods in a vertical position with their heads at or just below the surface.
  • Would you rather sleep upside down like a bat or sleep standing up like a horse? When not flying, bats hang upside down from their feet, which is called roosting. Horses are able to sleep both standing up and lying down.
  • Would you rather sleep with one eye open like a duck or get by on naps like a giraffe? Mallards are among the birds that sleep with half the brain at a time, and such birds keep one eye open. Giraffes sleep on and off for around 4.6 hours per day.

Homes and builders 9

  • Would you rather borrow a shell like a hermit crab or grow your own shell like a snail? Hermit crabs move into empty, scavenged snail shells to protect their soft abdomens. A snail's coiled shell is large enough for the animal to retract completely into.
  • Would you rather build a dam like a beaver or build a mud tower like a termite? Beavers build dams and lodges from tree branches, vegetation, rocks and mud. Some termite mounds in northeast Brazil are 3 m tall and 10 m wide.
  • Would you rather build a fresh bed nightly like an orangutan or dig like a wombat? Orangutans construct elaborate sleeping nests each night from branches and foliage. Wombats dig extensive burrow systems with their rodent-like front teeth and powerful claws.
  • Would you rather dig a den like an aardvark or squat in one like a warthog? The aardvark digs a burrow in which to live and rear its young. Common warthogs often occupy abandoned aardvark burrows and reverse in, with the head facing the opening.
  • Would you rather live in a town like a prairie dog or live in a warren like a rabbit? Prairie dogs live in large colonies called towns that can span hundreds of acres. European rabbits dig networks of burrows called warrens.
  • Would you rather make a paper nest like a wasp or make a mud nest like a swallow? Paper wasps gather fibers from wood and plant stems, mix them with saliva and build nests that look like gray or brown paper. Barn swallows build a cup nest from mud pellets.
  • Would you rather sew a leaf nest like a tailorbird or wall up your nest like a hornbill? A tailorbird pierces the edges of a large leaf and sews them together with plant fibre or spider silk. Female hornbills close the nest hole with a wall of mud, leaving a narrow gap for food.
  • Would you rather share a nest like a sociable weaver or nest on a cliff like a puffin? Sociable weavers build large, compound, community nests, a rarity among birds. Atlantic puffins nest in clifftop colonies, digging a burrow where a single white egg is laid.
  • Would you rather weave a nest like a weaverbird or decorate a bower like a bowerbird? Weavers are named for their nests of intricately woven vegetation. A male bowerbird builds a structure and decorates it with sticks and brightly coloured objects.

Under the sea 10

  • Would you rather be a blue whale, the biggest animal, or a whale shark, the biggest fish? The blue whale is the largest animal known to have ever existed. The whale shark is the largest known living fish species, and one measured 18.8 m long.
  • Would you rather glide like a flying fish or crawl ashore on your fins like a mudskipper? Flying fish leap out of the water and glide on long, wing-like fins. A mudskipper's jointed pectoral fins work like limbs, so it can crawl from place to place.
  • Would you rather glow in the deep like an anglerfish or change color like a cuttlefish? A deep-sea anglerfish's lure holds bioluminescent bacteria that make it glow in dark water. Cuttlefish can alter their skin color within one second.
  • Would you rather grow a tusk like a narwhal or grow a saw like a sawfish? A male narwhal's spiralled tusk is a protruding left canine tooth. A sawfish's long, flat rostrum is lined with sharp teeth, so it resembles a saw.
  • Would you rather have three hearts like an octopus or regrow an arm like a starfish? An octopus has three hearts: one main heart and two that pump blood through the gills. Most starfish can regenerate damaged parts or lost arms.
  • Would you rather live centuries as a Greenland shark or live to 200 as a bowhead whale? Greenland sharks have the longest lifespan of any known vertebrate, estimated at between 272 and 510 years. Bowhead whales may be the longest-lived mammals, able to reach more than 200 years.
  • Would you rather live in an anemone like a clownfish or build a reef like a coral? Clownfish rely on sea anemones for shelter and protect the anemone in return. Reef-building corals secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.
  • Would you rather run a cleaning station like a wrasse or hitch a ride like a remora? Bluestreak cleaner wrasses wait at cleaning stations and eat parasites off larger fishes' skin. A remora's first dorsal fin is a sucker-like organ that takes a firm hold on larger sea animals.
  • Would you rather sing like a humpback whale or whistle your name like a dolphin? Male humpbacks produce a complex song that lasts from 4 to 33 minutes. Each bottlenose dolphin has a signature whistle that identifies it.
  • Would you rather squirt ink like a squid or lie flat on the seabed like a flounder? Many squid can eject a cloud of ink to distract predators. A flounder hatches with an eye on each side of its head, and one eye migrates so that both end up on the side that faces up.

Defenses and tricks 11

  • Would you rather be see-through like a glass frog or be warning-bright like a dart frog? The belly skin of some glass frogs is transparent, so the heart, liver and gut show through. A poison dart frog's bright colour goes with its toxicity, a warning known as aposematism.
  • Would you rather copy sounds like a lyrebird or copy other animals like a mimic octopus? The superb lyrebird is renowned for its excellent mimicry. The mimic octopus and its close relative the wunderpus are the only octopuses known to actively imitate several animals to elude predators.
  • Would you rather drop your tail like a lizard or regrow a leg like an axolotl? Dropping the tail to escape is called caudal autotomy, and many lizards can do it. Axolotls can regenerate limbs, gills and parts of their eyes and brains.
  • Would you rather hide as a leaf like a leaf insect or hide as a twig like a stick insect? Leaf insects include some of the most remarkably camouflaged leaf mimics in the animal kingdom. Stick insects look so much like vegetation that predators find them hard to detect.
  • Would you rather hold anemones like a boxer crab or wear a disguise like a decorator crab? Boxer crabs hold small sea anemones in their claws for defense. Decorator crabs stick sedentary animals and plants to their bodies as camouflage.
  • Would you rather make slime like a hagfish or shed your skin like a snake? Hagfish defend themselves by releasing copious amounts of slime from glands in their skin. Snakes shed the complete outer layer of skin in one piece.
  • Would you rather play possum like an opossum or puff up like a pufferfish? A threatened Virginia opossum may go stiff and still with its eyes half-closed, which gave us the phrase "playing possum". A pufferfish fills its very elastic stomach with water until it is almost a ball.
  • Would you rather rattle like a rattlesnake or bristle like a porcupine? A rattlesnake's rattle is a series of hollow, interlocked keratin segments, and it serves as a warning. A threatened North American porcupine bristles its quills and clacks its teeth.
  • Would you rather roll up like a three-banded armadillo or curl up like a pangolin? Three-banded armadillos are the only armadillos that can roll into a ball; the others have too many plates. A pangolin curls into a ball too, with its overlapping scales acting as armor.
  • Would you rather slap a warning like a beaver or flash a frill like a frilled lizard? A beaver slaps the water with its tail as an alarm signal to other beavers. A frilled lizard's frill, fully extended, is a disc around 30 cm across.
  • Would you rather spray like a skunk or spray hot mist like a bombardier beetle? Skunks can spray a liquid with a strong, unpleasant scent. When disturbed, a bombardier beetle ejects a hot, noxious chemical spray with a popping sound.

Families and babies 9

  • Would you rather borrow a nest like a cuckoo or raise one chick like an albatross? The common cuckoo is a brood parasite: it lays its eggs in the nests of other bird species. The wandering albatross mates for life, breeds every other year and lays one egg.
  • Would you rather carry eggs like a seahorse dad or give piggybacks like an anteater mom? A female seahorse places up to 1,500 eggs in the male's pouch, and he carries them until they hatch. Mother giant anteaters carry their young on their backs until weaning.
  • Would you rather dance like a bird-of-paradise or fan your feathers like a peacock? Most birds-of-paradise have elaborate mating rituals. A peacock's eye-spotted train is made of covert feathers, which he displays as part of a courtship ritual.
  • Would you rather follow the matriarch like an elephant or follow the pack like a wolf? An elephant family group is led by the matriarch, usually the oldest cow. Wolves travel in nuclear families made up of a mated pair and their offspring.
  • Would you rather lay one giant egg like a kiwi or lay 300 million like a sunfish? A kiwi egg can be up to 20% of the female's weight, among the largest for body size of any bird. A female ocean sunfish can produce up to 300 million eggs at a time.
  • Would you rather live in a pride like a lion or live alone like a tiger? Lions are social and form groups called prides, made up of related females, cubs and one or a few adult males. Tigers live a mostly solitary life.
  • Would you rather never leave Mom like an orca or nest where you hatched like a sea turtle? Resident orcas of both sexes live with their mothers for their entire lives. Some female sea turtles return to lay eggs on the same beach where they hatched.
  • Would you rather serve a queen like a honey bee or serve a king and queen like a termite? A honey bee colony generally has one queen and tens of thousands of female workers. Most termite colonies begin with a king and a queen that form a lifelong pair.
  • Would you rather stand guard like a meerkat or whistle the alarm like a marmot? Members of a meerkat pack take turns at jobs such as looking after pups and keeping a lookout for predators. Marmots use loud whistles to communicate, especially when alarmed.

Dinner time 9

  • Would you rather blow bubble nets like a humpback or sniff out truffles like a pig? In bubble-net feeding, groups of humpback whales work together to gather and catch schools of small prey. Truffles were historically hunted using pigs, though dogs are now preferred.
  • Would you rather chew your food twice like a cow or scoop up dinner like a pelican? Cattle are ruminants: they bring food back up as cud and chew it again. A pelican catches prey in its large throat pouch and drains the water before swallowing.
  • Would you rather crack nuts like a capuchin or crack shells like a sea otter? One population of tufted capuchins uses stones as a tool to open hard nuts. Sea otters use rocks to dislodge prey and open shells, making them one of the few tool-using mammals.
  • Would you rather drink 30 gallons at once like a camel or never drink like a kangaroo rat? A dromedary camel can drink as seldom as once every 10 days, then take in as much as 30 imperial gallons at a time. Merriam's kangaroo rats get enough water from the seeds they eat and need no drink at all.
  • Would you rather farm fungus like a leafcutter ant or stash acorns like a woodpecker? Leafcutter ants cut leaves and carry them back to the nest to farm fungus. Acorn woodpeckers store acorns in granary trees with hundreds to thousands of drilled holes.
  • Would you rather live on leaves like a koala or live on ants like an anteater? Eucalyptus leaves make up most of a koala's diet. The giant anteater feeds mainly on ants and termites, which it collects with its long, sticky tongue.
  • Would you rather munch bamboo like a giant panda or gulp krill like a blue whale? About 99% of a giant panda's diet is bamboo. Blue whales are filter feeders, and their diet is almost exclusively krill.
  • Would you rather shoot water like an archerfish or fish with bait like a green heron? Archerfish shoot down insects with jets of water spat from their mouths. Green herons have been seen placing bait such as bread or feathers on the water to attract fish.
  • Would you rather turn pink from dinner like a flamingo or swallow stones like an ostrich? The pink or reddish colour of flamingos comes from carotenoids in their diet. Ostriches have no teeth, so they swallow pebbles that grind food in the gizzard.

Small wonders 9

  • Would you rather be as small as a bee hummingbird or be as small as an Etruscan shrew? The bee hummingbird is the smallest known bird. The Etruscan shrew is the smallest known mammal by mass, at about 1.8 g.
  • Would you rather dance a map like a honey bee or steer by the stars like a dung beetle? In the waggle dance, the direction a honey bee moves shows the others the direction of the food. Dung beetles are the only insects known to orient themselves by the Milky Way.
  • Would you rather jump like a flea or jump like a grasshopper? Some fleas can leap 50 times their body length. Grasshoppers escape from threats by leaping vigorously on powerful hind legs.
  • Would you rather leave a scent trail like an ant or slide along on slime like a slug? A forager ant that finds food marks a pheromone trail back to the colony for the others to follow. A slug lays down a layer of mucus and travels on it.
  • Would you rather light up a cave like a glowworm or light up the waves like plankton? Arachnocampa glowworm larvae hang from cave ceilings, and a roof covered in them can look like a starry sky. Dinoflagellates, a kind of plankton, make the light seen in breaking waves.
  • Would you rather skate on a pond like a water strider or walk on ceilings like a housefly? Water striders use the high surface tension of water and long, hydrophobic legs to stay on top. A housefly's feet have adhesive pads that let it walk up smooth walls and ceilings.
  • Would you rather spin a web like an orb weaver or hide under a trapdoor like a spider? Orb-weaver spiders build the spiral wheel-shaped webs often found in gardens. Trapdoor spiders dig burrows with a silk-hinged trapdoor to help them ambush prey.
  • Would you rather survive space like a tardigrade or grow young again like a jellyfish? Tardigrades have survived exposure to outer space. The jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii can revert completely to its immature polyp stage after reaching maturity.
  • Would you rather wait 17 years like a cicada or be a grown-up for 5 minutes like a mayfly? Periodical cicadas live underground as nymphs and come out in the spring of their 13th or 17th year. Adult mayflies do not feed, and the adult females of Dolania americana live for less than five minutes.

How it works

In these 85 animal would you rather questions, every choice is something a real animal does: Sleep 20 hours like a koala or sleep 4 hours like an elephant. A checked fact about each animal is in the list below.

Read the full guide

Both sides of every card are real

The argument is over which real talent is better. After the vote, find the card in the list under the deck and read out its two facts.

Nine topics, plus Quick picks and At the zoo

Nine topics sort the cards by what the animal does, from Speed and strength and Super senses to Defenses and tricks and Small wonders. Under the sea holds ten, such as Have three hearts like an octopus or regrow an arm like a starfish. Quick picks marks 26 short cards about well-known animals. At the zoo marks 39 about animals many zoos keep, such as gibbons, flamingos and meerkats.

  • At the zoo, press At the zoo and save each card for the right enclosure.
  • Press Hard for 22 cards that each hang on one new word, such as magnetism or electricity.
  • Before reading a fact out, ask each side to guess the number. A cheetah's top speed? 93 to 104 km/h.

Questions and answers

Are the animal facts true?

Each was checked in September 2026 against the English Wikipedia article for the animal it names, 158 articles. The lines are our own summaries. Where the article hedges, so does the line: a Greenland shark's lifespan is an estimate of 272 to 510 years.

What are some good would you rather questions about animals?

Try See ultraviolet like a bee or sense heat like a pit viper, or Fly ten months nonstop like a swift or stand on one leg like a flamingo. Both animals really do it, and the list under the deck says so.

Is there an animal deck written for children?

Yes, two. The kids deck has 40 Pets and animals cards in shorter words, and the kindergarten deck keeps every option to five words or fewer. The hard cards here use words such as ultraviolet, though no card is gory.

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