Horse
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98 free Horse trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Horse trivia questions with answers. Horse trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Horses trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01Every Northern Hemisphere Thoroughbred shares which official birthday?
New Year's Day
New Year's Day: every Thoroughbred born north of the equator ages a year on January 1, so breeders want foals born early in the year, when extra months of growth are an edge over rivals of the same official age.
Q 02Which tissue is absent from a horse's legs below the knee?
Muscle
Muscle is packed into the upper leg; below the knee a horse has bone, tendon, ligament and cartilage but no muscle, and the tendons and ligaments stretch and recoil like elastic to drive each stride.
Q 03What is a young female horse, typically under four years old, called?
Filly
Filly is the word for a female horse under four; racing draws the line a year later, so a Thoroughbred stays a filly until she turns five and only then becomes a mare.
Q 04What is a castrated male horse called?
Gelding
A gelding is a castrated male; most male riding horses are gelded because it leaves them calmer and easier to handle, a practice the Scythians are thought to have been among the first to adopt.
Q 05Which stage of sleep can a horse reach only by lying down?
REM
REM sleep leaves the whole body limp, so a horse must lie down for it; an hour or two every few days is enough, but a horse never able to lie down may eventually collapse into REM on its feet.
Q 06Which of a horse's sense organs is among the largest of its kind in any land mammal?
Eyes
Eyes: set on the sides of the head, they let a horse see almost all the way around itself, with only small blind spots straight ahead and directly behind.
Q 07What colors are horses generally thought to see best?
Blue and Yellow
Blue and Yellow match the two kinds of colour-sensing cone in a horse's eye; with no cone tuned to red, red objects look like a shade of green, much as they do to a red-green colour-blind person.
Q 08Which term describes horses by the way their gut digests grass?
Hindgut fermenters
Hindgut fermenters break down fibre in the cecum and colon, after the stomach rather than before it; the stomach itself is small, which is why a horse grazes little and often instead of eating big meals.
Q 09Judging a horse's age is said to have given English which phrase for 'old'?
Long in the tooth
Long in the tooth: as a horse ages its gums draw back and its front teeth slant further forward, so they look longer every year, which is how buyers have long judged a horse's age.
Q 10Which teeth do most male horses have but most mares lack?
Canines
Canines, also called tushes, come through at four to five years in most male horses but are often missing in mares, which is why a male usually has 40 or more teeth and a mare 36 to 40.
Q 11In which season are most horse foals born?
Spring
Spring: mares come into season only as the days lengthen and carry a foal for about 11 months, so a spring mating delivers the next foal a year later, clear of the harshest months of winter.
Q 12What is the tuft of mane that falls between a horse's ears and over its face called?
Forelock
The forelock is the part of the mane that falls forward between the ears; people once saluted their social betters by tugging their own, hence 'tugging the forelock' for showing deference.
Q 13Which part of a horse's leg is equivalent to the human ankle?
Hock
The hock is the horse's tarsal joint, the equivalent of the human ankle; the fetlock lower down, often miscalled the ankle, actually matches the ball of the human foot.
Q 21How many toes does a modern horse have on each foot?
One
One toe per foot: the modern horse stands on a single enlarged middle digit sheathed in the hoof, whereas its small ancestor Eohippus had four toes on each front foot and three on each hind foot.
Q 22Which of these is a horse physically unable to do?
Vomit
Vomit: the gullet joins the stomach at a sharp angle behind a powerful sphincter that works as a one-way valve, so a horse that overeats or swallows something harmful cannot bring it back up.
Q 23Which of these famous horse races is known as 'The Run for the Roses'?
Kentucky Derby
Kentucky Derby winners are draped in a blanket of red roses; New York sportswriter Bill Corum coined 'Run for the Roses' in 1925 and went on to become president of the track that stages the race.
Q 14Which horse breed is known for its distinctive spotted coat pattern?
Appaloosa
The Appaloosa was bred by the Nez Perce people of the Pacific Northwest; settlers called it the 'Palouse horse', possibly after a river in Nez Perce country, and the name is thought to have grown from that.
Q 15The horse lineage behind every modern breed spread across Eurasia about 4,000 years ago alongside which invention?
The chariot
The chariot: a 2021 ancient-DNA study traced all modern domestic horses to the Volga-Don steppes and found they swept across Eurasia together with spoke-wheeled chariots, replacing nearly every other bloodline.
Q 16In which equestrian sport do horse and rider perform a memorised test of set movements for judges?
Dressage
Dressage is French for 'training'; until 1952 its Olympic riders had to be military officers or 'gentlemen', and that year Denmark's Lis Hartel, partly paralysed by polio, became the first woman to win a medal in it.
Q 17On a horse, what are the withers?
The ridge between the shoulder blades
The withers are the ridge between the shoulder blades at the base of the neck; a horse's height is measured there because, unlike the head, the spot does not move up and down.
Q 18In Greek myth, the winged horse Pegasus was born from which monster?
Medusa
Medusa: when Perseus cut off the Gorgon's head, Pegasus sprang out with his brother Chrysaor, both fathered by Poseidon; the hero Bellerophon later rode him to kill the Chimera.
Q 19What is a small family group of wild horses called?
Band
A band is the basic family unit: what looks like one big herd of wild horses is usually several small bands sharing the same territory.
Q 20Which horse breed is renowned for its endurance racing ability and distinctive dished face?
Arabian
Arabians were bred by the Bedouin of the Arabian desert, who prized their war mares so highly that the horses sometimes shared the family tent for shelter and safety from thieves.
Q 24Which American breed descends entirely from one stallion owned by a Vermont schoolteacher?
Morgan
Morgan horses all trace to Figure, a stallion that Justin Morgan, a Vermont singing teacher, took in payment of a debt in 1792; the breed ended up carrying the owner's name rather than the horse's.
Q 25Which strap passes under a horse's belly to hold the saddle in place?
Girth
The girth, called a cinch in Western riding from the Spanish cincha, buckles under the belly to hold the saddle on; the same word, for a firm hold, gave English 'a cinch', a sure thing.
Q 26Sampson, the tallest and heaviest horse on record, belonged to which draft breed?
Shire
Shire: Sampson, foaled in 1846, stood about 2.19 m tall by 1850 and weighed an estimated 1,500 kg, a bulk that saw him renamed Mammoth.
Q 27What is the toothless area of a horse's mouth between the incisors and molars called?
Bar
Bar is the name for the toothless stretch of gum between a horse's incisors and cheek teeth; the mouthpiece of a bit rests there, on bare gum, which is how a pull on the reins reaches the horse.
Q 28In a pedigree, what is a horse's father called?
Sire
Sire is a horse's father and dam its mother; Thoroughbred rules bar artificial insemination, so a champion sire has to cover every one of his mares in person.
Q 29Which of these is a common base coat color for horses?
Bay
Bay, a reddish-brown body with black mane, tail and lower legs, is one of the commonest horse colours; genetically it is a black coat that a second gene confines to those 'points'.
Q 30Which race is the middle leg of the American Triple Crown?
Preakness Stakes
The Preakness Stakes is the second and shortest leg; by tradition, the moment its result is official a painter climbs to a weather vane and repaints its model horse and jockey in the winning owner's colours.