Can You Find a Unicorn, When You See One?

Can you find a unicorn, when you see one? Your answer is probably yes. Everyone knows what a unicorn looks like, right?

This quiz will challenge your idea of a unicorn! The idea is to look at pictures of unicorns, or are they unicorns? You need to think about it carefully before you decide. It’s not as easy as it sounds!

In fact, only a true unicorn fan can score 17/17 on this quiz!

So, can you find a unicorn, when it’s right in front of you? Try this quiz, and find out!

Can You Find a Unicorn, When You See One?

So, how did you do on the quiz? Did you recognize the unicorns and the non-unicorns?

Which pictures did you find the hardest?

I’d love to know how many points you got on this quiz. Were you able to spot the real unicorns? If you guessed wrong with some questions, which ones did you go wrong with? Please let me know in the comment section below!

You might also like our other unicorn quizzes, in which you get to test your unicorn knowledge.

The Usual Suspects: Animals Mistaken for Unicorns

This quiz is harder than it looks because nature keeps producing unicorn lookalikes. Before you decide whether a picture shows a real unicorn, it helps to know the impostors.

The narwhal is the champion. This Arctic whale’s long spiral tusk is a tooth, and for centuries those tusks were sold in Europe as genuine unicorn horns. Seen at the surface, a narwhal is a unicorn of the sea; our narwhal facts post tells its full story. The Arabian oryx is the land-based trickster: in strict side profile, its two long straight horns overlap into one, and many historians believe oryx sightings helped build the unicorn legend in the first place.

Then there is the saola, a shy forest animal from Vietnam and Laos so rarely seen it is called the Asian unicorn, and the unicorn fish, a real tropical fish wearing a small horn on its forehead. Add clever photography, a white horse standing in front of a well-placed branch, and a few confident fakes, and suddenly 17 out of 17 is a genuine achievement.

How to Spot the Real Thing

Judges of the old unicorn tapestries looked for three things: a single horn spiraling from the forehead, cloven hooves, and a beard like a goat’s. Run any picture in this quiz through that checklist before you answer. If you want to train your eye further, our post on the saola, the Asian unicorn, and the story of the unicorn fish are the best practice rounds we know.