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50 free Reindeer trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 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.
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Q 01What are reindeer called in North America?
Caribou
They are the same species, Rangifer tarandus; 'reindeer' is the European name and 'caribou' the North American one.
Q 02What makes reindeer unique among all deer species?
Females may grow antlers
How many females have antlers varies by subspecies, but no other deer's females do at all.
Q 03When do male reindeer usually lose their antlers?
Late autumn or early winter
Females keep theirs until they calve, so a reindeer with antlers at Christmas is probably a female or a young male.
Q 04The eyes of Arctic reindeer change colour between summer and winter. From what to what?
Gold to blue
The colour shift in the reflective tapetum lucidum helps them see in the months of continuous darkness.
Q 05Reindeer can see which kind of light that humans cannot?
Ultraviolet
It helps them spot things like lichen and fur that blend into snow in ordinary light.
Q 06What sound do reindeer knees make when they walk?
A clicking
The click comes from tendons and can be heard hundreds of metres away; louder clicks signal a bigger animal.
Q 07What is the main winter food of reindeer, which they alone among large mammals can digest?
Lichen
A bacterium found only in reindeer stomachs, Eubacterium rangiferina, breaks down the lichen's toxins.
Q 08How many chambers does a reindeer's stomach have?
Four
Like cows, they are ruminants that chew the cud.
Q 09Some North American herds migrate farther than any other land mammal, travelling up to how far a year?
5,000 km
They can cover 19 to 55 km a day and run at 60 to 80 km/h.
Q 10How soon after birth can a reindeer calf outrun an Olympic sprinter?
One day
Adults run at 60 to 80 km/h during migrations, when herds can swell to 500,000 animals.
Q 11How do reindeer hooves change with the seasons?
Spongy in summer, hard-rimmed in winter
The winter rim cuts into ice like a skate; the big crescent hooves also work as shovels for digging through snow.
Q 12Why do reindeer float so high when swimming?
Hollow, air-filled hairs
The two-layer coat, dense wool under hollow guard hairs, also keeps them warm even at 38 °C.
Q 13What special job does a reindeer's nose do in the cold?
Warms incoming air
A counter-current heat exchange in the nasal passages warms each breath before it reaches the lungs.
Q 21What happened to more than 81,000 reindeer in Russia in 2016?
They starved when rain froze over their lichen
Longer autumns brought freezing rain that sealed the food under inches of ice, a climate-change effect.
Q 22How many reindeer pull Santa's sleigh in the 1823 poem 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?
Eight
Rudolph, the ninth, was only added in 1939.
Q 23Which of these is NOT one of Santa's eight original reindeer?
The red-nosed one
The 1823 team was Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen.
Q 14Which is the smallest kind of the species?
Svalbard reindeer
Males average just 65 to 90 kg on the Norwegian archipelago; Osborn's caribou is the largest.
Q 15Reindeer are the only deer to have been what, on a large scale?
Semi-domesticated
Arctic peoples have relied on them for food, clothing and shelter since prehistoric times.
Q 16Which Indigenous people of northern Scandinavia are best known for reindeer herding?
The Sámi
About 2,800 Sámi herd full-time in Norway; in some regions the right to herd is legally reserved for them.
Q 17What was the Sámi region spanning northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia formerly called?
Lapland
Its own name is Sápmi.
Q 18Reindeer herding is practised in nine countries. Which of these is one of them?
Mongolia
The list is Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Greenland, the US (Alaska), Mongolia, China and Canada.
Q 19A small reindeer herd lives in which British national park?
Cairngorms
Researchers there found the animals' UV vision helps them pick out lichen against snow.
Q 20Roughly how many reindeer are herded by Sámi villages in Sweden?
About 250,000
Norway also has some 20,000 wild mountain reindeer, notably on the Hardangervidda plateau.
Q 24The names Donner and Blitzen come from a Dutch oath meaning what?
Thunder and lightning
The poem originally spelled them 'Dunder' and 'Blixem'; the German-style spellings came later.
Q 25Who is usually credited with writing 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?
Clement Clarke Moore
It was first published anonymously in the Troy, New York, Sentinel on 23 December 1823.
Q 26Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 for which department store?
Montgomery Ward
The Chicago retailer wanted its own giveaway booklet to save money on the ones it had been buying.
Q 27Who wrote the original Rudolph story?
Robert L. May
He considered calling the reindeer Rollo or Reginald first, and chose a reindeer because his daughter loved the deer at Lincoln Park Zoo.
Q 28Why was the idea of a red-nosed hero initially rejected in the 1930s?
A red nose suggested drunkenness
May had his illustrator friend draw cute reindeer sketches to win the bosses over.
Q 29Who turned Rudolph into a hit song, recorded by Gene Autry in 1949?
Johnny Marks, May's brother-in-law
Autry's record hit number one at Christmas 1949, sold 2.5 million copies in its first year and eventually 25 million.
Q 30Rudolph is usually described as which of Santa's reindeer?
The ninth and youngest
His glowing nose lets him lead the team on foggy Christmas Eves.