Run for your lives, it’s an Army of Frogs!

by Katie Bowell, Curator of Cultural Interpretation

An "Army" of Frogs

After last week’s research revealed that a group of grasshoppers is called a “cloud,” I was interested to learn what other creative names are given to aggregations of animals. Here are some of my favorites:

• Alligators: congretation
• Bears: sloth (sadly, a group of sloths is not called a “bear.”)
• Buffalo: obstinancy
• Catterpillars: army
• Cockroaches: intrusion
• Ducks: paddling
• Emus: mob
• Flamingos: flamboyance
• Flies: business
• Goldfish: troubling
• Jellyfish: smack
• Lizards: lounge
• Moles: labor
• Parrots: pandemonium
• Porcupines: prickle
• Rattlesnakes: rhumba
• Rhinoceroses : crash
• Wombats: wisdom

For more animal group names, be sure to read The San Diego Zoo’s great list.

Do you have any favorite “groups o’ animals” names? Have you always thought a group should have a name different than they do? Many of us here at the museum could come up with a few names for the group of squirrels that live in our courtyard, but those really aren’t appropriate to print…