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47 free Unicorn trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 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 01What is a unicorn's defining feature?
A single spiral horn
A unicorn's defining feature is a single spiral horn on its forehead; European art has shown it for a thousand years as a white horse- or goat-like beast with cloven hooves.
Q 02In medieval legend, who was the only person able to capture a unicorn?
A virgin maiden
Only a virgin maiden could tame the unicorn: it laid its head in her lap and slept, whereupon hunters seized it; medieval writers read the maiden as the Virgin Mary.
Q 03What was the medieval name for a unicorn's horn and the substance it was 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 04Which Danish physician determined in 1638 that alleged unicorn horns were really whale tusks?
Ole Worm
Ole Worm, a professor of medicine at Copenhagen, showed in 1638 that 'unicorn horns' were the tusks of an Arctic whale; Sir Thomas Browne then demolished the belief in his 1646 Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
Q 05Which ancient Greek writer gave the earliest description of the unicorn, in a book about India?
Ctesias
Ctesias of Cnidus, in his Indica of about 400 BC, described wild asses with a horn a cubit and a half long, coloured white, red and black, whose flesh was bitter.
Q 06Which 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's Natural History (Book 8) describes the beast with a stag's head, elephant's feet, boar's tail, horse's body and a single black horn two cubits long.
Q 07Which 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 08What 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 09In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, what colour are newborn unicorn foals?
Gold
Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures class learns that unicorn foals are born pure gold, turn silver at about two and become white only when fully grown.
Q 10Since 1707, the royal arms of the United Kingdom have been supported by a unicorn and what other animal?
A lion
The lion and the unicorn have supported the royal arms since James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603; in the Scottish version the crowned unicorn takes the dexter side.
Q 11In heraldry, the unicorn is usually shown wearing a collar with what attached?
A broken chain
The broken chain suggests it cannot truly be tamed; the beast is a horse with cloven hooves, a beard and a lion's tail.
Q 12Which 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 13The seven late-Gothic tapestries called The Hunt of the Unicorn hang in which museum?
The Cloisters, New York
John D. Rockefeller Jr. bought them in 1922 for about a million dollars and gave them to the Met.
Q 21What does the name Elasmotherium, the extinct 'Siberian unicorn', mean?
Plated beast
Elasmotherium means 'plated beast', from the Greek elasmos (plate) and therion (beast), named for the plate-like enamel folds of its molar teeth.
Q 22The 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 23The karkadann of Persian and Arabic legend was originally based on which real animal?
The Indian rhinoceros
Q 14Where were The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries rediscovered in the 1850s?
In a barn
Looted from the La Rochefoucauld château at Verteuil during the French Revolution, the tapestries were rediscovered in a barn in the 1850s and returned to the family.
Q 15The six 'Lady and the Unicorn' tapestries in Paris depict what?
The five senses and Love
They hang in the Musée de Cluny; the sixth is captioned 'A mon seul desir'.
Q 16Recreations of The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries were woven for which Scottish royal residence?
Stirling
Weavers recreated the seven Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries for Stirling Castle's Queen's Inner Hall between 2001 and 2014, recalling unicorn hangings listed in a 16th-century royal inventory.
Q 17Which 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 18The Arctic whale's famous spiral tusk is actually what?
An overgrown left canine
It grows 1.5 to 3 metres long, mainly in males, and may sense water salinity.
Q 19What is the scientific name of the tusked Arctic whale?
Monodon monoceros
Monodon monoceros is the sole species in its genus; it lives in Arctic waters off Canada, Greenland and Russia, and was named by Linnaeus in 1758.
Q 20Elasmotherium, the extinct 'Siberian unicorn', was what kind of animal?
A giant rhinoceros
Elasmotherium was a giant rhinoceros of the Eurasian steppe, weighing around four tonnes and surviving until at least 39,000 years ago; no horn has ever been found.
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 24A unicorn-like creature is the most common image on which Bronze Age civilisation's seals?
Indus Valley
The Indus Valley 'unicorn', a bull-like beast with one curved horn, appears on more Harappan steatite seals than any other motif, usually facing a mysterious two-tiered standard.
Q 25In 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 26Which venture capitalist coined the business term 'unicorn' in 2013?
Aileen Lee
Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures coined the term in a November 2013 TechCrunch article, 'Welcome to the Unicorn Club', which counted 39 such US software companies.
Q 27Who 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 28In 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 29Which studio duo directed the 1982 animated film of The Last Unicorn?
Rankin/Bass
Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass of Rankin/Bass directed it, with voices by Mia Farrow, Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges, Angela Lansbury and Christopher Lee, and songs by the band America.
Q 30What is the name of the bumbling magician who travels with the unicorn in The Last Unicorn?
Schmendrick
Schmendrick, a magician whose spells rarely work, joins the unicorn after freeing her from Mommy Fortuna's Midnight Carnival; he was voiced by Alan Arkin in the 1982 film.