Do You Know Whether These Animals Are Omnivores, Carnivores, Herbivores, or Detritivores?

By: J. Reinoehl
Image: shutterstock

About This Quiz

Hey, animal enthusiast! Let’s see if you really know what your favorite animals are eating! Do you know what a grasshopper is classified as? How about a tiger? What kind of animal is a hedgehog? Do you think you can answer these questions? Then this is the quiz for you. And if you want to learn the answers to these questions, guess what—this is the quiz for you, too!

Just in case you need a little refresher: Carnivores eat living meat. Herbivores eat living plants and vegetation. Omnivores eat living plants and animals, and detritivores eat dead and decaying organisms. With this quiz, consider what animals naturally eat. So while a farmer may feed meat to his sheep, and the sheep may eat it because it is mixed into its food, that does not mean the sheep is an omnivore. Since sheep naturally only eat vegetation, it would be considered an herbivore.

We know you love animals, or you wouldn’t have clicked on this quiz, but this “Do You Know Whether These Animals Are Omnivores, Carnivores, Herbivores, or Detritivores?” quiz will find out just how much you know about their eating habits. Show us you know the difference between carnivores and herbivores, and then challenge your friends to beat your score!

What type of animal is a bear?

“Why what on earth would I do if four bears came into my camp? Why, I would die of course.” –Bill Bryson from A Walk in the Woods

What type of animal is a millipede?

Millipedes begin their lives with only three pairs of legs and can grow up to 200 as an adult. Adult millipedes have two pairs of legs per body segment.

What type of animal is a horse?

“Horses calm me. I love being around them. They smell great; they are beautiful to look at; they are loving, demanding, temperamental, and they settle you.” –Shania Twain

What type of animal is a grasshopper?

Grasshoppers belong to the order Orthoptera. The insects in this order make noise (“chirping”) by rubbing their back legs against their wings. They have ears in their front legs beneath the knee.

Which of the following animals is an omnivore?

“In the land of skunks, he who has half a nose is king.” –Chris Farley

What type of animal is a ladybug?

Ladybugs lay extra clusters of eggs that do not contain embryos. These allow newly hatched babies to have food as soon as they come out of their egg.

What type of animal is a goose?

“If you want to save a species, simply decide to eat it. Then, it will be managed like chickens, like turkeys, like deer, like Canadian geese.” –Ted Nugent

What type of animal is a lion?

Lions live in prides that contain about 15 individual lions. You can hear a lion roar from about 5 miles away.

What type of animal is an iguana?

“I always had an affinity for lizards. I’ve always felt somewhat close to them. They’re reptiles. I find myself feeling somewhat reptilian at times.” ― Johnny Depp

Which of the following animals is a carnivore?

The front row of teeth in a shark’s mouth usually contains about 50 teeth. Within its lifetime, it may go through up to 30,000 teeth.

What type of animal is an elephant?

“They say somewhere in Africa the elephants have a secret grave where they go lie down, unburden their wrinkled gray bodies, and soar away, light spirits at the end.” –Robert McCammon in Boy’s Life

What type of animal is a raccoon?

Raccoons are notorious for eating anything. They prefer clams, crayfish, frogs, snails, bird eggs, birds, fruits, nuts, and vegetables. They also eat pet food and human garbage.

What type of animal is a green cellar slug?

“Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy. So do not trouble it, do not harass them, do not deprive them of their joy, do not go against God's intent.” –Fyodor Dostoyevsky from The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

What type of animal is a fox?

Foxes are solitary animals. The only time they live with other foxes is when they are raising young.

Which of the following animals is an herbivore?

“Just as bees make honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so do the wise profit from the most difficult of experiences.” –Plato

What type of animal is a cow?

Although usually docile, cows kill 22 humans each year. Milk cows that are named and cared for will produce more milk and are less likely to injure farmers.

What type of animal is a rat?

“Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return..” –Ecclesiastes 3: 19—20 (NIV)

What type of animal is an Asian palm civet?

Kopi Luwak is the world’s most expensive coffee and is created by force-feeding captured civets (and sometimes their endangered relatives) coffee beans and then the beans are recovered from the civet feces. Sadly, many of these captive animals are poorly cared for and there is a high mortality rate among them.

What type of animal is a tiger?

“Tigers, except when wounded or when man-eaters, are on the whole very good-tempered...Occasionally, a tiger will object to too close an approach to its cubs or to a kill that it is guarding. The objection invariably takes the form of growling, and if this does not prove effective it is followed by short rushes accompanied by terrifying roars. If these warnings are disregarded, the blame for any injury inflicted rests entirely with the intruder.” –Jim Corbett

Which of the following animals is a detritivore?

Burying beetles find small dead animals, transport them to their burrow, remove all its hair, embalm it, and then lay their babies near it. The mother eats the decomposing animal and regurgitates it to feed her babies.

What type of animal is a domestic cat?

“It is very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them they always purr.” –Lewis Carroll

What type of animal is a bat sea star?

Unlike other sea stars that only eat living things, bat sea stars primarily surround dead plants and animals in the sea and digest them by extending its stomach over them.

What type of animal is a hedgehog?

“The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one, but that is the best of all.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

What type of animal is a goat?

Goats are thought to be the first animals ever domesticated by humans. Goat meat is consumed in greater quantities (per capita) than any other meat.

Which of the following is a carnivore?

“There are two things for which animals are to be envied: They know nothing of future evils or of what people say about them.” –Voltaire

What type of animal is a deer?

White-tailed deer average between 6-8 feet tall and weigh 110-300 lbs. Deer kill around 130 people each year, although this mainly occurs when deer hit cars and cause accidents.

What type of animal is a pig?

“The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel..” –Proverbs 12: 10 (NIV)

What type of animal is a rabbit?

After eating all those vegetables, rabbits have a hard time breaking them down. Because of this rabbits eat their first poop. The first poop is softer and the second poop is hard. This digestive process works similar to the way a cow chews its cud.

What type of animal is a hawk?

“There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.” –Robert Wilson Lynd

Which of the following is an omnivore?

Ravens eat a wide variety of foods: fruit, carrion, meat, fish, seeds, and garbage. They participate in “anting” where they roll in an ant hill and then kill the ants and rub their dead bodies into their feathers.

What type of animal is a white rhinoceros?

“Rhinos are just fat unicorns. If we’d give them the time and attention they deserve as well as a diet, they’d reveal their majestic ways.” –Ashley Purdy

What is one name for a zebra?

Zebras are found in Africa and can run up to 65 mph. Each zebra has a different pattern of stripes.

What type of animal is a spider?

“I take my hat off to you—or I would if I were not afraid of showering you in spiders.” –J. K. Rowling from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Which of the following is an herbivore?

The hippo will spend up to 16 hours of its day in the water. They can hold their breath for five minutes. They secrete a red, oily substance when they sunbathe on the shore that acts like sunblock and moisturizes their skin.

What type of animal is a warthog?

“Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives.” –Albert Schweitzer

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