Flock, herd, colony, pack, swarm are the words to describe a group of animals everyone knows, right. Some might even use "a pride of lions" and a "school of fish" on a regular basis. After that it gets a touch weird. Random examples:
Ambush of tigers
Army of frogs
Bale of turtles
Barrel of monkeys
Bevy of swans
Bloat of hippos
Business of ferrets
Caravan of camels
Cauldron of bats
Confusion of wildebeests
Convocation of eagles
Crash of rhinos
Drove of donkeys
Embarassment of pandas
Fever of stingrays
Flamboyance of flamingoes
Gaggle of geese
Knot of toads
Labor of moles
Leap of leopards
Murder of crows
Nursery of racoons
Pandemonium of parrots
Parade of elephants
Parcel of deer
Parlament of owls
Pod of whales
Prickle of porcupines
Raft of penguins (on water)
Richness of martins
Riot of kookaburras
Quiver of cobras
Scurry of squirrels
Shadow of jaguars
Shiver of sharks
Shrewdness of apes
Skulk of foxes
Sloth of bears
Smack of jellyfish
Snuggle of sloths
Stench of skunks
Tower of giraffes
Troop of kangaroos
Unkindness of ravens
Waddle of penguins (on land)
Wisdom of wombats
Zeal of zebras
This list is nowhere near to being exhaustive. Looks like some wacko has literally made up a separate group name for every animal on the planet. It also seemed that every place I checked had a bunch that were not listed on other sites; many animals have different names depending on whether they are young, old, male, female, on land or on water or in the air or just have many names for the heck of it etc. Gave up looking for a comprehensive list after half an hour.
Definitely could play a word-game with these - name one for every letter of the alphabet or sth.
After some sitting and wondering whether plants or foodstuff or sth has been treated in the same way, found this. And this and this.
Cheers,
Hedi
