Unicorn Trivia
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94 free Unicorn trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
43 free Unicorn trivia questions with answers. Unicorn trivia for a rainbow-themed party, a classroom, or anyone who has wondered why Scotland's national animal is imaginary. The questions cover the legend from Ctesias and the Indus seals to the medieval maiden-and-unicorn allegory, the 'alicorn' horns that were really narwhal tusks, heraldry and the UK royal arms, and the two great tapestry cycles in New York and Paris. They also take in the real animals behind the myth (narwhals, the 'Siberian unicorn' Elasmotherium, the rhinoceros Marco Polo saw), the Chinese qilin and Persian karkadann, and modern unicorns: The Last Unicorn, Legend, Despicable Me, Charlie the Unicorn, My Little Pony and the billion-dollar startups named after them. It is family-friendly throughout. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the creature, its history and its appearances, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
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Q 01In the Harry Potter books, which part of a unicorn does Ollivander use as a wand core?
A tail hair
A tail hair from a unicorn is one of Ollivander's three wand cores, with phoenix feather and dragon heartstring; he rates such wands the most faithful and the hardest to turn to the Dark Arts.
Q 02What name is given to a unicorn's horn and the substance it was thought to be made of?
Alicorn
Alicorn was the name for both the unicorn's horn and its supposed substance; it was believed to purify poisoned water, and cups made of it were gifts for kings.
Q 03In 1638 the physician Ole Worm showed that Europe's prized 'unicorn horns' were really what?
Narwhal tusks
Narwhal tusks were what Ole Worm found the 'unicorn horns' to be in 1638; the powerful had long prized cups of the 'horn' as protection against poisoned drinks.
Q 04Which ancient Greek writer gave the earliest description of the unicorn, in a book about India?
Ctesias
Ctesias of Cnidus described India's swift one-horned wild asses in his Indica of about 400 BC, relying on travellers' tales he heard while serving as a physician at the Persian court.
Q 05Which Roman writer described a one-horned beast with a stag's head, elephant's feet and boar's tail?
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder listed the beast among the real animals of India in his Natural History, gave it a deep bellow and a black horn two cubits long, and added that it could not be taken alive.
Q 06Which traveller described 'unicorns' as ugly, mud-wallowing brutes 'scarcely smaller than elephants'?
Marco Polo
Marco Polo, writing of Sumatra, said its 'unicorns' were 'not at all such as we describe them' and loved to wallow in mud and mire.
Q 07What is the Hebrew Bible word that the King James Version translated as 'unicorn'?
Re'em
Re'em is the Hebrew word the King James Version rendered 'unicorn' nine times, from Numbers 23:22 to Isaiah 34:7, following the Greek Septuagint's 'one-horned' reading.
Q 08In Harry Potter, unicorn foals are born gold and turn which colour before growing up white?
Silver
Silver comes between the gold of a newborn and the white of a grown unicorn; Hagrid tells his class that foals are more trusting than adults, which prefer a woman's touch, and 'don't mind boys so much'.
Q 09The royal arms of the United Kingdom are supported by a unicorn and what other animal?
A lion
A lion, England's royal beast, replaced one of the two unicorns that had held up the Scottish royal arms when James VI also became James I of England in 1603, pairing two animals that legend made enemies.
Q 10What hangs from the collar of the unicorn on the British royal coat of arms?
A gold chain
A gold chain runs from its crown-shaped collar, between the forelegs and over the back. Nobody is sure why, but the usual reading is that only a king could tame the untameable beast.
Q 11Which Scottish king introduced the coin called the unicorn in 1484?
James III
James III introduced the unicorn, a coin showing the beast supporting the royal shield, in about 1484; James IV and James V continued the issue.
Q 12The seven late-Gothic tapestries called The Hunt of the Unicorn hang in which museum?
The Cloisters, New York
The Cloisters, New York, received them from John D. Rockefeller Jr., who paid about a million dollars in 1922 and hung them in a room of his own home until the museum was built.
Q 13Where were The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries rediscovered in the 1850s?
In a barn
In a barn, where a peasant was reportedly using the 'old curtains' to cover vegetables; they had been looted from the La Rochefoucauld château during the French Revolution.
Q 21The qilin, sometimes called the Chinese unicorn, is said to appear at the arrival or death of what?
A sage or great ruler
The qilin is said to appear with the arrival or passing of a sage or great ruler; legend has one heralding the birth of Confucius in the 6th century BC.
Q 22The karkadann of Persian and Arabic legend was originally based on which real animal?
The Indian rhinoceros
Karkadann is the Persian and Arabic word for rhinoceros; the legend grew from the one-horned Indian rhinoceros, which al-Biruni described in the 11th century.
Q 23A unicorn-like creature is the most common image on which Bronze Age civilisation's seals?
Indus Valley
Q 14The 'Lady and the Unicorn' tapestries in Paris are usually read as an allegory of what?
The five senses
The five senses fill five of the six hangings: touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight. The sixth, captioned 'À mon seul désir', has no agreed meaning, and the Musée de Cluny itself floats courtly love or free will.
Q 15Recreations of The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries were woven for which Scottish royal residence?
Stirling
Stirling Castle got the seven hangings because James V's inventories listed unicorn tapestries of his own; weavers took more than a decade to copy the originals by hand.
Q 16Which Renaissance artist's notebooks make the unicorn a symbol of intemperance?
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci's bestiary notes file the unicorn under intemperance: unable to control itself, it 'forgets its ferocity and wildness' and lets hunters take it.
Q 17The Arctic whale's famous spiral tusk is actually what?
An overgrown left canine
An overgrown left canine, it pierces the upper lip and spirals out to around 3 metres, mostly in males; packed with nerve endings, it may help the whale sense how salty the water is.
Q 18What is the scientific name of the tusked Arctic whale?
Monodon monoceros
Monodon monoceros ends in the Greek for 'one horn', the name classical writers gave the unicorn itself, so the whale's scientific label all but calls it a sea unicorn.
Q 19Elasmotherium, the extinct 'Siberian unicorn', was what kind of animal?
A giant rhinoceros
A giant rhinoceros of the Eurasian steppe, Elasmotherium lived until at least 39,000 years ago, alongside modern humans. No horn has ever been found: the 'unicorn' rests on a bony dome on its skull.
Q 20Which children's author wrote 'The Unicorn', the Irish Rovers' 1968 hit about Noah's ark?
Shel Silverstein
Shel Silverstein, a Chicago cartoonist, wrote what sounds like an old Irish folk song; in it Noah sails without the unicorns, which is why nobody has seen one since.
Indus Valley seals show a bull-like beast with one arching horn more often than any other image, and single-horned clay figurines suggest it was no two-horned bull drawn side-on.
Q 24In business, a 'unicorn' is a private startup valued at more than how much?
$1 billion
A unicorn is a privately held startup valued at over $1 billion, a threshold so rare in 2013 that the mythical beast seemed apt; companies past $10 billion are called decacorns.
Q 25In the Tintin adventure 'The Secret of the Unicorn', what is the Unicorn?
A sailing ship
A sailing ship once commanded by Captain Haddock's ancestor Sir Francis, the Unicorn survives as three identical models, each hiding a scrap of parchment that points to the pirate Red Rackham's treasure.
Q 26Who wrote the 1968 novel The Last Unicorn?
Peter S. Beagle
Peter S. Beagle published The Last Unicorn in 1968; the novel has sold millions of copies and he also wrote the screenplay for its 1982 animated film.
Q 27In The Last Unicorn, what creature drove all the other unicorns into the sea?
The Red Bull
The Red Bull, serving King Haggard, drove all the other unicorns into the sea; a butterfly tells the last unicorn that it 'ran close behind them'.
Q 28Which studio duo directed the 1982 animated film of The Last Unicorn?
Rankin/Bass
Rankin/Bass directed it but had it drawn in Japan by Topcraft, the studio Hayao Miyazaki then hired for Nausicaä, and its core animators went on to form Studio Ghibli.
Q 29What is the name of the bumbling magician who travels with the unicorn in The Last Unicorn?
Schmendrick
Schmendrick is a Yiddish word for a hapless fool, which suits a magician whose spells rarely work; he joins the unicorn after freeing her from Mommy Fortuna's Midnight Carnival.
Q 30In Ridley Scott's 1985 film Legend, what does the Lord of Darkness want from the unicorns?
Their horns
Their horns are what Darkness sends his goblins to cut off, so that night will never end; the moment the stallion loses his, winter falls across the world.