ANIMAL WORLD & GROUP NAMES
Khaliqur Rahman
Sometimes when I think of the
animal world, I shudder
to
realise that animals are more disciplined than most of us. Have
you
ever seen a dog smoking or drinking? The animals are not
hypocrites
because they are not capable of telling a lie because
they
have no language like human beings. Man has language.
Englishmen
have the English language. They have names for persons,
things,
animals and groups of animals.
You
must have come across terms like herd or flock or
even
litter or pack. But have you come across
similar terms like
sounder, shrewdness, hastiness, cowardice, charm, gaggle,
school, army, colony, troop, ambush, crash and parliament,
to
list a few out of many?
Let's
start with the king, the king of the animal kingdom.
What
is the term for a group of lions? If you do know you'll
say
a pride of lions! What
about a group of tigers and a group
of leopards? Well,
they say an ambush of tigers and a leap of
leopards.
What
will you say if it is a group of
horses? Well, you
can
say a stud of horses. If
they're breeding horses, you'll say a
harass of horses. A team of horses is dialectal.
When
you see kangaroos together, you can say either a
mob of kangaroos or a troop of kangaroos.
You
can use troop for monkeys, too, and say a troop
of monkeys.
Similarly,
you can use mob for cattle, deer and sheep
and
say a mob of cattle, a mob of deer and a mob of sheep.
A mob of sheep is
Australian and a mob of cattle is both Australian
and
American.
You
say a shrewdness of apes, a sounder of wild
boar, a cowardice of curs, a charm of finches, a school of
porpoises and a school of whales, too.
A small school of whales is
known as a pod of whales.
Learn
English & Follow-up Essays // 59 //
It
is possible to say a herd of whales and a gam of
whales also. When whales are bottle-nosed, they
are referred
to
as a grind of bottle-nosed whales.
A herd is a common term used for asses, buffalo,
cattle, cranes, curlew, deer, elephants, giraffes, goats and
pigs.
They
say a herd of swine but a sounder of tame swine
and
a drift of wild swine.
A game or herd of swans they say when the swans are
not
in the air. When they are in the air, they refer to them as a
wedge of swans.
Racehorses always go in a string. Peacocks go in a
muster; pups and cubs, in a litter; sparrows, in a host and
swallows in a flight.
Let's
now have a look at some humorous terms. Man
is
an animal, perhaps superior most, perhaps most developed,
perhaps
one who can laugh at himself like a monkey that can
bend
down and round to have a look at its own red posterior
and
laugh! Therefore, for sheer fun, it is possible to say a gaggle
of women and a bevy of ladies! I'm sure
you must have found
yourself
once in a while in the company of a
superfluity of nuns,
faith of merchants and a hastiness of cooks!
Before
I finish, I'm tempted to quote from a popular mailforward,
going
round. Here it is: The English language has some
wonderfully
anthropomorphic collective nouns for the various
groups
of animals. We are familiar with a herd of
cows, a flock
of chickens, a school of fish and
a gaggle of geese.
However,
less
widely known is a murder of crows, an exaltation
of doves and, presumably,
because they look so wise, A PARLIAMENT
OF OWLS!
A gathering of baboons are the
loudest, most dangerous,
most
obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent
of
all primates. And, what is the proper collective noun for a
group
of baboons? Believe it or not . A CONGRESS!
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