ANIMAL COLLECTIVE NOUNS

There are some pretty unusual and funny collective nouns for animals but one that always struck me as strange is that in order to suggest wisdom, the collective noun for owls is “a parliament of owls”.

Isn’t the collective noun “A parliament of owls” actually insulting if you want to suggest that owls are intelligent?

Surely that would suggest they are merely pointless animals who enjoy preening themselves and running up huge expense bills?

For some of the other animals some of them are quite interesting too. I always like “a business of ferrets” as if you see one you have the opportunity to say “What is all this ferret business?”.

Some of them seem to have semi-sensible connotations and some bizarre

• A flange of baboons – seems vaguely rude
• A consortium of crabs – has a businesslike feeling (without ferrets)
• A risk of lobsters
• A party of peacocks
• A mischief of rats
• A shrewdness of apes

Some of them seem unfair

• A murder of crows
• A horde of gerbils
• A sloth of bears

It should also of course be pointed out that a lot of this is usually just projecting human qualities onto animals, which is not a fair thing to do. There are some however, that have a nice onomatopoeic feel to them

• A coffle of donkeys
• A gaggle of geese

Finally, something I once read in a book and have since had confirmed in reality is that when you speak to or listen to zoologists they never use the plural. They go to see “gorilla” instead of “gorillas”.

Here is my video about “gorilla”