Horse Trivia
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95 free Horse trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
25 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 01How long is one hand, the unit used to give a horse's height?
Four inches
Four inches is the standardised width of a human hand, which is how the unit began; the tape stops at the withers, where the neck meets the back, not at the top of the head.
Q 02Under most competition rules, what is an equine measuring no more than 14.2 hands at the withers called?
Pony
Pony means 14.2 hands or under, whatever the animal's age. Polo 'ponies' break the rule: most are full-sized horses, named from the days when the game capped its mounts at that height.
Q 03Roughly how long does a mare carry a foal before giving birth?
Eleven months
Eleven months, about 340 days, is long enough for a foal to arrive well developed: it is up on its feet and following its mother shortly after birth.
Q 04What is the term for a young female horse, normally one under four years of age?
Filly
Filly is the word for a young female, colt for a young male; when the two meet on the track, as in the Kentucky Derby, the fillies are set to carry a few pounds less.
Q 05Which of a horse's four natural gaits is a three-beat gait?
Canter
Canter is short for 'Canterbury gallop', the easy pace at which pilgrims rode to Canterbury; its three beats sit between the two-beat trot and the four-beat gallop.
Q 06Checking a gift horse's mouth, as the proverb warns against, would reveal what about the animal?
Its age
Its age: a horse's teeth erupt and wear in a known pattern, so buyers read the mouth to judge how old it is. Doing that to a present was the rudeness the proverb warns against.
Q 07Which endangered wild horse, once extinct in the wild, has 66 chromosomes to the domestic horse's 64?
Przewalski's horse
Przewalski's horse was last seen wild in the 1960s, and herds bred from zoo animals have been returned to Mongolia since the 1990s. Despite the extra pair, it can still have fertile foals with domestic horses.
Q 08Heavy horses traditionally delivered beer for breweries by pulling vehicles of which kind?
Drays
Drays are low, strong carts without fixed sides, made for heavy loads such as beer barrels; the word goes back to the Old English for 'to draw'.
Q 09The Lipizzan horse is most closely associated with which institution?
The Spanish Riding School of Vienna
The Spanish Riding School of Vienna has schooled its Lipizzans in classical dressage for centuries. Its famous white stallions are born dark and lighten with age.
Q 10Eventing puts one horse and rider through dressage, show jumping and which third phase?
Cross-country
Cross-country, ridden over solid obstacles, is the phase that shows eventing's roots: the sport began as a test for cavalry horses and their riders.
Q 11Bucephalus was the celebrated warhorse of which commander?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great won the horse as a boy, in Plutarch's telling, by turning the unridable Bucephalus toward the sun so that he could no longer see the shadow that frightened him.
Q 12What does the name Bucephalus literally mean?
Ox-headed
Ox-headed: the Greek joins bous, 'ox', and kephale, 'head', possibly because the horse bore a brand mark shaped like an ox's head.
Q 13Bucephala, the city named for the warhorse Bucephalus, was founded where he died in which modern country?
Pakistan
Pakistan: his master founded two cities on the Hydaspes after the battle there, one named Nicaea for the victory and this one for the horse that died beside it.
Q 21A post-mortem on Secretariat found which organ to be more than twice the normal size?
Heart
Heart: the vet who examined him in 1989 never put it on a scale, but called it perfect, 'just this huge engine', and he later estimated it at about 22 pounds.
Q 22Which English racecourse stages the Grand National?
Aintree
Aintree's first National, in 1839, went to a horse aptly named Lottery, and the runners had to clear a stone wall and cross a stretch of ploughed land on the way round.
Q 23Which horse is the only three-time winner of the Grand National?
Red Rum
Red Rum won in 1973, 1974 and 1977 despite a bone disease in his feet: trainer Ginger McCain galloped him on Southport beach, and the seawater is credited with keeping him sound.
Q 14The Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerley Turk were the three founding sires of which breed?
Thoroughbred
Thoroughbred: all three stallions were imported to England and bred to local mares, and every modern Thoroughbred can trace its pedigree back to them.
Q 15Which bone of the human skeleton is missing altogether in the horse?
Collarbone
Collarbone: a horse has none, so its forelegs are not joined to the spine by bone at all but are held in place by muscles and tendons.
Q 16How many mounted players make up each team in outdoor polo?
Four
Outdoor polo is four a side. Riders swap mounts between periods because one horse cannot last a whole match.
Q 17What is each period of play in a polo match called?
Chukka
Chukka comes from a Hindi word for a circle or turn, a trace of the game's route to Britain through India; an outdoor match runs to between four and eight of them.
Q 18At which racetrack is the Kentucky Derby run?
Churchill Downs
Churchill Downs is named for John and Henry Churchill, who leased 80 acres to their nephew Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. for the track that staged the first Kentucky Derby in 1875.
Q 19The Kentucky Derby winner is draped in a blanket of which flower?
Roses
Roses give the Derby its best-known nickname, 'The Run for the Roses', taken from the blanket of blooms draped over the winner.
Q 20In 1973, Secretariat won which race by a record 31 lengths?
Belmont Stakes
Belmont Stakes: the win completed his Triple Crown, and bettors holding 5,617 winning tickets never cashed them, presumably keeping them as souvenirs of the day.
Q 24The Grand National is what type of horse race?
Steeplechase
Steeplechase: the name goes back to races over open country in which riders steered for a church steeple, and the National still asks its runners to take 30 fences.
Q 25Which Grand National fence is named for a captain unseated into its ditch in 1839?
Becher's Brook
Becher's Brook is where Captain Martin Becher was pitched off in 1839; he sheltered in the water below the fence until the rest of the field had jumped over him.
Q 26What is the average lifespan of a modern domestic horse?
25 to 30 years
25 to 30 years is typical, though a few horses reach their 40s. Racing keeps the count simple: every racehorse in the Northern Hemisphere officially turns a year older on 1 January.
Q 27Eyes on the sides of its head leave a horse with a blind spot where?
Directly behind its tail
Directly behind its tail: side-set eyes let a grazing animal watch nearly the whole horizon for predators, at the price of a blind spot at the back and another just in front of the nose.
Q 28Which American breed was developed for short sprint races, in which it can outrun any other?
Quarter Horse
Quarter Horse: the breed was developed for races of about a quarter of a mile, which gave it its name, and over that distance it can outrun other breeds.
Q 29The Botai people of 5,500 years ago, whom some scientists credit with first taming horses, lived in which modern country?
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan: Botai villages on its northern steppe are thick with horse bones, yet DNA has shown their horses were not the ancestors of today's domestic breeds.
Q 30What are the four canine-type teeth found behind the incisors of stallions and geldings called?
Tushes
Tushes are a male trademark: stallions and geldings normally grow all four, while in most mares they are missing or barely break the gum.