Here are some good ones (sorry if this is alredy a topic but I could not find one)
Alligators – a congregation
Apes – a shrewdness
Bats – a colony or cauldron
Bears – a sleuth
Butterflies - kaleidoscope, a swarm or a flutter
Cats – a clowder
Crows – a murder
Donkeys – a pace
Ducks - raft
Ferrets – a business
Gerbils – a horde
Giraffes – a tower
Gold finch - a cham
Grackles - a plauge
Hippopotamuses – a bloat
Hyenas – a cackle
Leopards – a leap
Martens – a richness
Owls and Magpies – a parliament
Pandas - an embarrassment
Porcupines – a prickle
Raccoons – a nursery or gaze
Rats – a mischief
Rhinos – a crash
Skunks – a surfeit
Squirrels – a dray
Toads – a knot
Turtles – a bale
Whales – a pod
I’ve always wondered how such a diversity of different English-language names for groups of animals came about. I suspect they didn’t arise all at once and most of them are no longer used or recognized by English speakers today. But what was the rationale for their invention and use in the first place (e.g., why a specific name for a group of gerbils)? Many sound like names a poet or prose writer would come up with.
You already mentioned a murder of crows. For ravens, its an ‘unkindness’ or a ‘conspiracy’. I like corvids though, so I don’t particularly like those names. I’d propose a ‘conversation’ of crows instead and perhaps a ‘ruffle’ of ravens.
It’s always fun to read these lists, but you must remember that many of them are the creation of a single poet or writer who was trying to conjure up an image with a phrase that had never been used previously. It’s not like the origin is “lost in folklore.”
