60 free Mythical Creatures trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
51 free Mythical Creatures trivia questions with answers. Every culture invented monsters, and this quiz visits most of them. It covers the Greek bestiary (Minotaur, Hydra, Chimera, Cerberus, Medusa, Pegasus), the Norse (Fenrir, Jörmungandr, Sleipnir), the creatures of Celtic and Scottish folklore (kelpies, selkies, banshees, leprechauns), Japanese yōkai like the kitsune and kappa, the golem of Prague, and the cryptids of the Americas: Bigfoot, the Mothman, the chupacabra and the jackalope. It also digs into what people were probably really seeing. Columbus's mermaids were manatees, the kraken was a giant squid, unicorn horns were narwhal tusks, and the most famous photo of the Loch Ness Monster was a toy submarine. Questions start easy enough for a family quiz night (what turns you to stone, how many legs Odin's horse has) and work up to expert territory (which poet invented the hippogriff, which animal a basilisk cannot stand). Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia article for that creature and each question shows its source.
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Q 01Which mythical creature is the national animal of Scotland?
Unicorn
Two of them supported the royal arms of the King of Scots, and the beast is still on the UK coat of arms today.
Q 02A phoenix is a legendary bird that is reborn from what?
The ashes of its predecessor
Fawkes in the Harry Potter books is Dumbledore's phoenix; the Chinese fenghuang is a separate creature that gets translated with the same word.
Q 03Odin's horse Sleipnir is unusual for having how many legs?
Eight
His mother was Loki, who had shape-shifted into a mare to distract a stallion building the walls of Asgard.
Q 04The Minotaur of Greek myth lived at the centre of the Labyrinth on which island?
Crete
Theseus found his way back out with a ball of thread given to him by King Minos's daughter Ariadne.
Q 05Cerberus, the multi-headed dog of Greek myth, guards the gates of what place?
The underworld
Capturing him was the last of Heracles' twelve labours; he is usually given three heads and a serpent for a tail.
Q 06In Greek myth, anyone who looked at the Gorgon slain by Perseus was turned into what?
Stone
Perseus used the severed head as a weapon before giving it to Athena for her shield.
Q 07The Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, is said to inhabit forests in which part of North America in particular?
The Pacific Northwest
The 1958 footprints that launched the modern craze turned out to have been made with carved wooden feet, revealed by the prankster's family in 2002.
Q 08The Yeti of the Himalayas is better known in Western pop culture by what nickname?
The Abominable Snowman
The nickname dates from the 1921 British Everest reconnaissance expedition; the Tibetan word combines 'rocky place' and 'bear'.
Q 09The Loch Ness Monster's 1934 'surgeon's photograph' was a hoax built around what?
A toy submarine
Christian Spurling, stepson of a big-game hunter humiliated by the Daily Mail, admitted the model was his; most researchers have accepted the confession since 1994.
Q 10A werewolf is also known by what Greek-derived term meaning 'wolf-human'?
Lycanthrope
Full moons and infectious bites are mostly a movie invention; the earliest sources for the belief are Petronius in the 1st century and Gervase of Tilbury.
Q 11Bram Stoker's Dracula, the quintessential vampire novel, was published in what year?
1897
It was actually beaten to print by fellow Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla in 1872, and by John Polidori's The Vampyre in 1819.
Q 12The Chinese dragon, unlike its fire-breathing European cousin, is traditionally a deity of what?
Rain
Under the Ming and Qing dynasties the five-clawed version was reserved for the emperor alone.
Q 13A leprechaun is traditionally depicted as which kind of craftsman, with a hidden pot of gold?
Shoemaker
Before the 20th century he was generally said to wear red, not green.
Q 21Per Pliny the Elder, the basilisk's one fatal weakness was the odour of which animal?
Weasel
The link may come from real accounts of mongooses killing cobras; the name means 'little king' in Greek.
Q 22According to legend a cockatrice hatches from a chicken's egg incubated by which animal?
A toad or snake
Medieval writers scarcely distinguished it from the basilisk, and both were said to kill with a look.
Q 23The Sphinx of Greek myth killed and ate travellers who could not do what?
Answer her riddle
Oedipus finally solved it; the Great Sphinx of Giza, by contrast, is a benign guardian probably carved with the face of the pharaoh Khafre.
Q 14The kraken of Norwegian legend is thought to have been inspired by sightings of what real animal?
Giant squid
The root of the Norwegian word 'krake' means a malformed, crooked tree, which suits a mass of tentacles.
Q 15What is Columbus believed to have actually seen when he reported three 'mermaids' off Hispaniola in 1493?
Manatees
He complained that they were not as beautiful as painted, having rather masculine faces.
Q 16Which Danish physician proved in 1638 that 'alicorns' sold as unicorn horns were narwhal tusks?
Ole Worm
So-called alicorn was prized as an antidote to poison and sold for many times its weight in gold.
Q 17The griffin combines the body of a lion with the head and wings of which bird?
Eagle
Since classical antiquity griffins were said to guard the gold deposits of Central Asia against the one-eyed Arimaspians.
Q 18The Chimera was a fire-breathing lion with a snake tail and the head of which animal rising from its back?
A goat
Its name means 'she-goat' in Greek; the hero Bellerophon killed it from the back of the winged horse Pegasus.
Q 19For every head cut off the Lernaean Hydra, how many grew back in the best-known versions of the story?
Two
Heracles' nephew Iolaus cauterised each stump with fire, and the Greek expression 'cutting off a hydra' came to mean an endless task.
Q 20The winged horse Pegasus sprang from the blood of which figure when she was beheaded by Perseus?
Medusa
His father was Poseidon in his role as horse-god; his brother Chrysaor was born in the same moment.
Q 24A centaur has the upper body of a human and the lower body of which animal?
Horse
They were said to live in the mountains of Thessaly and were called the Ixionidae, 'sons of Ixion'.
Q 25The manticore, a man-faced lion with a spiked tail, comes from the mythology of which ancient empire?
Persia
Its name means 'man-eater' in Old Persian; it was said to swallow victims whole, leaving no bones.
Q 26A wyvern differs from a classic dragon mainly in having how many legs?
Two
In heraldry it is rarely fire-breathing, unlike other dragons, and it turns up as a mascot for many schools and sports teams.
Q 27Which Italian poet invented the hippogriff, born of a mare and a griffin, in the early 1500s?
Ludovico Ariosto
It appears in Orlando Furioso as a pairing everyone considered impossible; an English translation of 1591 called it a 'Griffith horse'.
Q 28In Norse myth, which god lost his right hand in the jaws of the wolf Fenrir when the gods bound him?
Týr
Fenrir is a child of Loki and is fated to kill Odin at Ragnarök before being slain by Odin's son Víðarr.
Q 29Jörmungandr, the World Serpent of Norse myth, encircles the earth and does what?
Bites its own tail
Its letting go of the tail is one of the signs that Ragnarök has begun; it is Loki's middle child by the giantess Angrboða.
Q 30The kelpie of Scottish folklore is a shape-shifting spirit that usually takes the form of which animal?
A grey or white horse
Some accounts say it keeps its hooves even in human form; two 30-metre steel Kelpies were completed at Falkirk in 2013.