Some collective nouns are taken seriously and others will only ever win you a very interpretational point in the local pub quiz but that won’t stop us listing them.
Antelope come in herds, Lions prowl the Savannah, proud in their prides, and you’ll find Monkeys in a troop. But how do we collectively describe Africa’s other icons?
Below are some of the more unexpected collective nouns that we’ve given to the weird, wonderful and wild:
Apes, intelligent and inventive, they come in a shrewdness.
Hippos come in a bloat or a crash.
What’s that buffeting about my ears on this cold, coastal night? A cauldron of bats, I believe.
Flamingos neither come nor go, they stay, a part of a stand.
Owls sit instead. They’ll sit and they’ll judge in a parliament of owls.
The tall Giraffe watches all as part of a tower, disregarding the dazzle of Zebras as it scans the plains for any threats.
What would you rather face? A gang of turkeys or an army of frogs?
Geese are either a gaggle, if they are grounded, or a skein, if they are in flight.
How we group Rhinos and Porcupines may not surprise you: they come in a crash and a prickle.
If I were a paranoid sort of game spotter, I’d swear I’d just seen a conspiracy of Lemurs.
Gnus, or the Wildebeest, with their wayward walks and disorganised crossings, are grouped together in a very apt confusion of Wildebeest.
Equally apt, as they face down the deadliest of Africa’s predators, are the bullish Cape Buffalo which are grouped together as part of an obstinacy.
Elephant don’t come in a herd, not on this list. Instead, a group of Ellies is a memory, and we at the Tsavo Trust have found this to be very appropriate a term indeed. Especially, considering their ability to remember watering holes and sometimes, it seems, recognise our surveillance planes.