What animal's head does the Mock Turtle have?

The Mock Turtle has a calf’s head.

Lewis Carroll built the character around mock turtle soup, a Victorian dish designed to imitate real turtle soup. Traditional recipes commonly used a calf’s head, along with other veal ingredients, to reproduce the texture and richness associated with turtle meat. John Tenniel’s illustration turns that culinary joke into a creature with a turtle’s body and front flippers but a calf’s head and feet.

Alice meets the melancholy Mock Turtle alongside the Gryphon near the end of her adventure. He claims to have once been a real turtle and describes his peculiar education under the sea. His school stories parody Victorian schooling, including lessons such as “Reeling and Writhing” and “Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.”

A common mix-up is to answer “cow’s head,” since a calf is a young cow. The book’s visual and culinary pun, however, specifically points to a calf’s head, making that the canonical quiz answer.