Mythical Creatures Trivia
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109 free Mythical Creatures trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 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.
30 of 109 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which mythical creature is the national animal of Scotland?
Unicorn
The unicorn is Scotland's national animal. Unicorns supported the royal arms of the King of Scots before the 1603 Union of the Crowns, and a unicorn is one of the supporters of the UK royal arms.
Q 02A phoenix is a legendary bird that is reborn from what?
The ashes of its predecessor
The phoenix is reborn from the ashes of its predecessor: in the classical legend the aged bird burns on a pyre of spices and a new phoenix rises from the ashes, a cycle Harry Potter's Fawkes repeats.
Q 03Odin's horse Sleipnir is unusual for having how many legs?
Eight
Sleipnir has eight legs. Loki, shape-shifted into a mare to lure the stallion Svaðilfari away from building Asgard's wall, later bore the eight-legged foal and gave it to Odin.
Q 04The Minotaur of Greek myth lived at the centre of the Labyrinth on which island?
Crete
The Labyrinth stood at Knossos on Crete, built by Daedalus for King Minos; Theseus escaped it with the ball of thread Ariadne gave him.
Q 05Cerberus, the multi-headed dog of Greek myth, guards the gates of what place?
The underworld
Cerberus guards the gates of the underworld, Hades' realm, letting the dead in but never out; fetching him was the last of Heracles' twelve labours.
Q 06In Greek myth, anyone who looked at the Gorgon slain by Perseus was turned into what?
Stone
The Gorgon's gaze turned anyone who met it to stone; Perseus avoided it by watching her reflection in his polished shield, then used the severed head to petrify his enemies.
Q 07The Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, is said to inhabit forests in which part of North America in particular?
The Pacific Northwest
Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, belongs to the forests of the Pacific Northwest: 'Sasquatch' anglicises the Halkomelem word sásq'ets, and the name 'Bigfoot' was coined in 1958 by a California newspaper reporting giant tracks found by a road crew.
Q 08The Yeti of the Himalayas is better known in Western pop culture by what nickname?
The Abominable Snowman
The Abominable Snowman is the Western nickname for the Yeti, coined in 1921 when journalist Henry Newman loosely translated the Sherpa term 'metoh-kangmi' reported by a British Himalayan expedition.
Q 09The Loch Ness Monster's 1934 'surgeon's photograph' was a hoax built around what?
A toy submarine
The 'surgeon's photograph' showed a toy submarine fitted with a sculpted head and neck; Christian Spurling, stepson of big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell, confessed to building the model in 1993.
Q 10Bram Stoker's Dracula, the quintessential vampire novel, was published in what year?
1897
Dracula was published in May 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company in London; Stoker, business manager of Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre, had begun his notes for the novel in 1890.
Q 11The Chinese dragon, unlike its fire-breathing European cousin, is traditionally a deity of what?
Rain
Chinese dragons are benevolent water spirits that bring rain: the Dragon Kings of the four seas were prayed to for rainfall, and dragon dances were performed to end droughts.
Q 12A leprechaun is traditionally depicted as which kind of craftsman, with a hidden pot of gold?
Shoemaker
The leprechaun is a solitary fairy shoemaker, traditionally heard tapping away at a single shoe, and before the 20th century he was usually described in a red coat rather than green.
Q 13The kraken of Norwegian legend is thought to have been inspired by sightings of what real animal?
Giant squid
Q 21According to legend a cockatrice hatches from a chicken's egg incubated by which animal?
A toad or snake
Medieval bestiaries had the cockatrice hatch from a cock's egg incubated by a toad or snake; writers scarcely distinguished it from the basilisk, and both were said to kill with a glance.
Q 22The Sphinx of Greek myth killed and ate travellers who could not do what?
Answer her riddle
The Sphinx devoured travellers who could not answer her riddle; Oedipus solved it with the answer 'man', who crawls as a baby, walks upright, then leans on a stick, and the Sphinx hurled herself from her rock.
Q 23A centaur has the upper body of a human and the lower body of which animal?
Horse
The kraken is generally traced to the giant squid (Architeuthis), which can reach around 13 metres; the Norwegian 'krake' means a twisted or malformed thing, apt for a tangle of tentacles.
Q 14What is Columbus believed to have actually seen when he reported three 'mermaids' off Hispaniola in 1493?
Manatees
Columbus's three 'mermaids' of January 1493 were almost certainly manatees, the sea cows whose order is named Sirenia after the sirens; he wrote that they were not as beautiful as painted and had masculine faces.
Q 15Which Danish physician proved in 1638 that 'alicorns' sold as unicorn horns were narwhal tusks?
Ole Worm
Ole Worm, a Copenhagen physician and collector, showed in 1638 that so-called alicorns were narwhal tusks; alicorn had been prized as a poison antidote worth many times its weight in gold.
Q 16The griffin combines the body of a lion with the head and wings of which bird?
Eagle
The griffin has an eagle's head and wings on a lion's body; Herodotus and Aristeas placed griffins guarding gold in the far north beyond Scythia against the one-eyed Arimaspians.
Q 17The 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 18For 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 19The winged horse Pegasus sprang from the blood of which figure when she was beheaded by Perseus?
Medusa
Pegasus sprang from Medusa's neck when Perseus beheaded her, together with the giant Chrysaor; their father was Poseidon, who had lain with Medusa in Athena's temple.
Q 20Per Pliny the Elder, the basilisk's one fatal weakness was the odour of which animal?
Weasel
Pliny wrote that the basilisk, deadly to everything else, is killed by the stench of the weasel, which hunters throw into its hole; the name means 'little king' in Greek.
A centaur is human above the waist and horse below, with four equine legs; the centaurs were said to live in the mountains of Thessaly and descend from Ixion and the cloud-nymph Nephele.
Q 24The 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 25Which one-eyed giant did Odysseus blind with a sharpened stake in the Odyssey?
Polyphemus
Polyphemus, a Cyclops and son of Poseidon, trapped Odysseus's crew in his cave; Odysseus got him drunk on wine, drove a heated stake into his eye and escaped clinging beneath his sheep.
Q 26Which Italian poet invented the hippogriff, born of a mare and a griffin, in the early 1500s?
Ludovico Ariosto
Ludovico Ariosto introduced the hippogriff in Orlando Furioso (1516), where the wizard Atlante rides it and Ruggiero later tames it; Virgil had used the mating of griffins with mares as a proverb for impossibility.
Q 27In Norse myth, which god lost his right hand in the jaws of the wolf Fenrir when the gods bound him?
Týr
Týr placed his right hand in Fenrir's mouth as a pledge while the gods bound the wolf with the ribbon Gleipnir; when Fenrir found he could not break free, he bit the hand off.
Q 28Jörmungandr, the World Serpent of Norse myth, encircles the earth and does what?
Bites its own tail
Jörmungandr grew so large that it encircles Midgard and bites its own tail; when it lets go, Ragnarök begins. It is Loki's middle child by the giantess Angrboða, and Thor is fated to kill it.
Q 29In Scottish folklore, what does a kelpie do to anyone who climbs onto its back?
Drags them into the loch and drowns them
A kelpie's hide turns sticky once a rider mounts; it then drags them into the loch and drowns them, often devouring the body. A bridle slipped over its head was said to tame it.
Q 30Selkies of Northern Isles folklore change from seal to human by doing what?
Shedding their skin
Many tales have a man steal a selkie's skin to force her to marry him; she flees back to the sea the moment she finds it.