How it works
How does a whale sleep without drowning, and what is a whale fall? These whale trivia questions take the large cetaceans in five rounds, from how the two groups differ to what people once made from baleen.
Read the full guide
Whale trivia questions and answers by round
Baleen and toothed whales counts blowholes and names the blackfish. Body, breath and blubber covers the fused neck, the spout and the sounding dive. Senses, sounds and sleep asks where sound enters and which sense is missing. Calves, feeding and migration follows a mother who fasts on the breeding grounds. Whales and people runs from Basque whalers to bycatch.
For a whale watch or an ocean unit
Ten questions come up, one after another. Pick a choice to have it checked and explained, with the article named below. Scored round is twenty questions with the results shown last.
Questions and answers
How do whales sleep?
Lightly. Whales breathe by conscious effort, so they cannot be unconscious for long. Toothed whales in captivity sleep with one side of the brain at a time, and sperm whales have been found sleeping upright just under the surface.
How long can a whale hold its breath?
It depends on the species. Whales must surface to breathe, but some, such as the sperm whale, can stay underwater for up to 90 minutes.
Are dolphins whales?
In everyday use, no: whales are the large cetaceans apart from dolphins and porpoises. From a formal point of view dolphins and porpoises may be counted as whales, and six dolphins, the orca among them, have whale in their names.
How were the answers checked?
Each was read on October 3, 2026 in the English Wikipedia article Whale, which every question links. Counts of whales, conservation rankings and catch quotas are not asked, since they change from year to year.