A Crash of Rhinos

I've always had the sneaking suspicion that animal group names are more poetic than scientific. Come to find out, that many of them actually are made up by some eccentric lady more than 500 years ago. Dame Juliana Berners wrote an essay on hunting in the Book of St Albans in 1486. In the essay she classified groups of animals with nouns that she simply thought sounded good. And so we have a gaggle of geese, an army of ants, a school of fish, a pride of lions, a troop of baboons and some of my favorites:

A crash of rhinos
A cackle of hyenas
A coalition of cheetahs
An obstinacy of buffalo
A conspiracy of ravens
An intrusion of cockroaches
A murder of crows
A tower of giraffes
A bloat of hippos
A leap of leopards

Some groups of animals have more than one name. You can say a herd of buffalo, a troop or a gang. But I think an obstinacy of buffalo sounds best, don't you? The good thing about group names having their basis in poetry and not science is that we can simply make them up ourselves. How about a snort of hippos, a rumble of elephants, or a polka of leopards?

Find more group names from the San Diego Zoo and the NPWRC.

_{Tower of Giraffes -- © Getty Images/Theo Allofs}