Mythical Creatures Trivia
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107 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 107 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: two unicorns held up the Scottish royal arms until 1603, when James VI inherited England's crown and swapped one for the English lion.
Q 02A phoenix is a legendary bird that is reborn from what?
The ashes of its predecessor
The ashes of its predecessor are the famous version, not the oldest: Herodotus has no fire at all, only a phoenix carrying its dead father to Egypt sealed in an egg of myrrh.
Q 03Sleipnir, the eight-legged steed of Norse myth, is ridden by which god?
Odin
Odin's steed came from a trick: a god took the shape of a mare to lure away a giant builder's stallion, and later gave birth to the grey, eight-legged foal.
Q 04The Minotaur of Greek myth lived at the centre of the Labyrinth on which island?
Crete
Crete's Labyrinth was built for King Minos by Daedalus, so cunningly, Ovid says, that the architect himself could hardly retrace his steps to the way out.
Q 05Cerberus, the multi-headed dog of Greek myth, guards the gates of what place?
The underworld
The underworld's hound, Hesiod says, fawns on everyone who comes in, wagging his tail, but eats anyone he catches trying to slip back out through the gates.
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 roam the forests of which region in particular?
The Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest is its home: 'Sasquatch' comes from a Halkomelem word of British Columbia, and 'Bigfoot' caught on in 1958 when a California newspaper wrote up huge tracks found by loggers.
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
A toy submarine carried the sculpted head and neck: the big-game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell staged it as revenge after the 'monster footprints' he had found were exposed as fakes.
Q 10Which character leads the hunt for Count Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel?
Van Helsing
Abraham Van Helsing, a Dutch doctor, is called in by his former student John Seward to treat the ailing Lucy, hangs her room with garlic and then rallies the others to hunt the Count.
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 21The Sphinx of Greek myth killed and ate travellers who could not do what?
Answer her riddle
Answer her riddle or be eaten was the Sphinx's rule; Oedipus solved it with 'man', who crawls as a baby, walks upright, then leans on a stick, and in most tellings the beaten Sphinx killed herself.
Q 22A centaur has the upper body of a human and the lower body of which animal?
Horse
Horse below the waist and human above, the centaurs were usually traced to Ixion, a king tricked by Zeus into embracing a cloud shaped like the goddess Hera.
Q 23The manticore of Persian legend has a man's face, a lion's body and, in most tellings, the tail of which creature?
Scorpion
Giant squid is the usual suspect, since the classic account by the Danish bishop Erik Pontoppidan in the 1750s gave the kraken a body 'round, flat, and full of arms'.
Q 14What is Columbus believed to have actually seen when he reported three 'mermaids' off Hispaniola in 1493?
Manatees
Manatees are the likeliest explanation for the three 'mermaids' in Columbus's journal, and he was unimpressed, noting that they were not as beautiful as they are painted and had faces like men.
Q 15The 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 16The Chimera was a fire-breathing lion with a snake tail and the head of which animal rising from its back?
A goat
A goat is what its Greek name means, 'she-goat'; the hero Bellerophon killed the Chimera from the air, riding Pegasus.
Q 17For every head cut off the Lernaean Hydra, how many grew back in the best-known versions of the story?
Two
Two heads grew for each one cut off, so Heracles had his nephew Iolaus sear each stump with a burning brand before it could sprout again.
Q 18The winged horse Pegasus sprang from the blood of which beheaded monster of Greek myth?
Medusa
Medusa was pregnant by Poseidon when Perseus cut off her head, and Pegasus sprang from her blood together with his brother Chrysaor.
Q 19Pliny the Elder wrote that the basilisk could be killed by the smell of which animal?
Weasel
Weasel: Pliny wrote that one thrown into the basilisk's burrow killed the monster with its stench, though the weasel died in the struggle too.
Q 20According to legend, a cockatrice hatches from a cock's egg incubated by which creatures?
A toad or snake
A toad or snake hatches the egg, itself laid by a cock; the cockatrice was scarcely told apart from the basilisk, and travellers were said to carry roosters because a cock's crow could kill it.
Scorpion: the Greek doctor Ctesias, who heard of the beast at the Persian court, said its tail could shoot stings like arrows and glossed its Persian name as 'man-eater'.
Q 24Which 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 25Buckbeak in the Harry Potter stories is which creature, first imagined by the Italian poet Ariosto in 1516?
Hippogriff
Hippogriff: Ariosto bred it from a griffin and a mare for his epic Orlando Furioso, playing on an old saying that used that pairing to mean something impossible.
Q 26In 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 27Jörmungandr, the World Serpent of Norse myth, encircles the earth and does what?
Bites its own tail
Bites its own tail: the gods threw the serpent into the sea, where it grew until it ringed the whole world, and at Ragnarök Thor is fated to kill it, then die of its venom.
Q 28In Scottish folklore, what does a kelpie do to anyone who climbs onto its back?
Pulls them under to drown
Pulls them under to drown: the kelpie waits by the bank looking like a tame pony, but a rider who mounts sticks fast to its hide and is carried into the river to be eaten.
Q 29Selkies of Northern Isles folklore change from seal to human by doing what?
Shedding their skin
Shedding their skin lets selkies come ashore in human form, and many tales turn on a man who steals a selkie woman's sealskin, trapping her on land as his wife until she finds it again.
Q 30What does the wail of a banshee foretell in Irish folklore?
The death of a family member
The death of a family member is what her wail foretells, traditionally only in old Irish families; when several banshees wail together, it is said to be for someone great or holy.