Reindeer Trivia
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49 free Reindeer trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
44 free Reindeer trivia questions with answers. Reindeer trivia that works for a Christmas party or a classroom, with questions kids can answer alongside stumpers for the grown-ups. The animal half covers what makes reindeer special: females with antlers, eyes that turn from gold to blue in winter, ultraviolet vision, clicking knees, hollow hair, lichen diets, record migrations and the Sámi herders of Lapland. The legend half covers Santa's eight reindeer from the 1823 poem, why Donner and Blitzen were once Dunder and Blixem, how Rudolph was born as a Montgomery Ward giveaway in 1939 and became a Gene Autry hit, and the 1964 stop-motion special with Hermey the would-be dentist. Sven from Frozen and the film Prancer get a look in too. Nothing here is violent or scary. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the animal, the poem, Rudolph and the herding cultures, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'caribou' comes from a Mi'kmaq name that describes the animal doing what?
Pawing away snow
Pawing away snow. Dictionaries trace the name through Canadian French to Mi'kmaq qalipu, 'snow-shoveller', for the way the animal scrapes down to its winter food.
Q 02What makes reindeer unique among all deer species?
Females may grow antlers
Females may grow antlers. A cow keeps hers right through the winter and drops them only in spring, around the time her calf is born.
Q 03When do male reindeer usually lose their antlers?
Late autumn or early winter
Late autumn or early winter. By then the antlers have done their job: bulls use them to spar over mates in the breeding season, drop them soon after and grow a larger pair the next year.
Q 04Between summer and winter, the eyes of Arctic reindeer change from what colour to what?
Gold to blue
Gold to blue. The mirror-like layer at the back of the eye shifts colour with the seasons, a change thought to help the animals see through the long dark of the Arctic winter.
Q 05Reindeer can see which kind of light that humans cannot?
Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet. Things that vanish against snow in ordinary light, such as fur, urine and the plants they graze, stand out in sharp contrast to an eye that can see it.
Q 06What sound do reindeer make with every step as they walk?
A clicking
A clicking. Tendons slip over small bones in the foot with each stride, so a herd on the move travels in a steady chorus of clicks.
Q 07What is the main winter food of reindeer?
Lichen
Lichen. So-called reindeer moss is no moss at all, and it grows in pale mats across the northern lands where the herds spend the winter.
Q 08Summer caribou herds can swell to tens of thousands of animals partly to get relief from what?
Biting insects
Biting insects. Mosquitoes, warble flies and nose bot flies torment the herds, which bunch together and head for windy ridges and coasts where the swarms thin out.
Q 09Norwegian whalers introduced reindeer in 1911 to which remote island on the edge of the Antarctic?
South Georgia
South Georgia. Ten animals brought for fresh meat grew into the world's most southerly herds, which trampled so much wildlife habitat that all were removed in the 2010s.
Q 10How soon after birth can a reindeer calf outrun a human?
One day
One day. A calf can suckle within minutes and follow its mother within the hour, a head start it needs because the herd keeps moving and predators single out newborns.
Q 11How do reindeer hooves change with the seasons?
Spongy in summer, hard-rimmed in winter
Spongy in summer, hard-rimmed in winter. The soft pads grip wet tundra; when they shrink in the cold, the sharp hoof edge is left exposed to bite into ice and crusted snow.
Q 12Why do reindeer float so high when swimming?
Hollow, air-filled hairs
Hollow, air-filled hairs. The trapped air works twice over, buoying the animal up in water and holding in body heat on land.
Q 13What special job does a reindeer's nose do in the cold?
Warms incoming air
Q 21What caused about 61,000 reindeer to starve in Siberia in 2013?
Rain freezing on snow
Rain freezing on snow. Unseasonal rain froze into a crust of ice that the animals could not break through to reach their food, and some 20,000 had starved the same way in 2006.
Q 22How many reindeer pull Santa's sleigh in the 1823 poem 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?
Eight
Eight. Two years earlier, the first verse to put a reindeer in front of Santa's sleigh had given him just one; this poem multiplied the team and named every animal.
Q 23In 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', which reindeer does St. Nicholas call by name first?
Dasher
Dasher. He heads a roll call that leaves out the most famous reindeer of all: Rudolph was not invented until 1939, more than a century after the poem.
Warms incoming air. Icy air is heated on its way through the nose before it reaches the lungs, and the nose is so tightly packed with blood vessels that scientists joked it explains Rudolph.
Q 14Which is the smallest kind of reindeer?
Svalbard reindeer
Svalbard reindeer. Short-legged and round-headed, they have lived on Norway's Arctic islands for thousands of years and, unlike most of their kin, stay put instead of migrating.
Q 15Reindeer are the only deer to have been what, on a large scale?
Semi-domesticated
Semi-domesticated. Herders use them to pull heavy loads and keep them for milk, meat and hides, a way of life found right around the Arctic.
Q 16Which Indigenous people of northern Scandinavia are best known for reindeer herding?
The Sámi
The Sámi. Reindeer give them meat, fur and transport, and in parts of the Nordic countries the right to herd the animals is reserved for them by law.
Q 17The herding lands across the far north of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia are traditionally called what in English?
Lapland
Lapland. Finland bills its share as the home of Santa Claus, whose village, complete with reindeer, sits on the Arctic Circle at Rovaniemi.
Q 18Which of these countries, far from the Arctic coast, has a small community of traditional reindeer herders?
Mongolia
Mongolia. The Dukha of the far northern forests keep reindeer for their milk and for riding, and rarely kill one for meat.
Q 19A small reindeer herd lives in which British national park?
Cairngorms
Cairngorms. Reindeer are believed to have died out in Scotland about 800 years ago, and it took until 1952 for a husband-and-wife team to bring them back to the mountains.
Q 20Which Canadian coin has shown a caribou on its reverse since 1937?
The quarter
The quarter. Artist Emanuel Hahn's caribou arrived when a new monarch's portrait prompted Canada to redesign its coins, and it has given way only briefly to commemorative designs.
Q 24Santa's reindeer Donner and Blitzen take their names from Dutch words meaning what?
Thunder and lightning
Thunder and lightning. The poem first printed the pair as 'Dunder and Blixem'; later editions made them Donder and Blitzen, and today's Donner arrived later still.
Q 25Who is usually credited with writing 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?
Clement Clarke Moore
Clement Clarke Moore. The poem appeared unsigned in a Troy newspaper and was not printed under his name for another fourteen years, and Henry Livingston Jr.'s family has long argued that Livingston wrote it.
Q 26Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 for which department store?
Montgomery Ward
Montgomery Ward. The store had been buying in Christmas booklets to give away and asked one of its own copywriters for a cheaper home-grown one; it handed out 2.4 million copies that year.
Q 27Who wrote the original story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1939?
Robert L. May
Robert L. May. A copywriter at a Chicago department store, he tried each part of the story out on his four-year-old daughter Barbara as he wrote it.
Q 28Why did the store that commissioned Rudolph in 1939 at first reject a red-nosed hero?
A red nose suggested drunkenness
A red nose suggested drunkenness. The author changed his boss's mind with a colleague's sketches of a bright-nosed deer, drawn from life on a trip to a Chicago zoo.
Q 29Which songwriter turned the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer into a hit song in 1949?
Johnny Marks
Johnny Marks. He was the brother-in-law of Rudolph's creator, who talked him into setting the story to music; he later wrote 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree' as well.
Q 30Which 'Singing Cowboy' took 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' to number one at Christmas 1949?
Gene Autry
Gene Autry. Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore had both turned the song down before he recorded it, and it went on to become one of the best-selling Christmas songs of all time.