A Maul of Bears

Cartoon animals struggling to hold a heavy Placeholder Image sign while a bird prepares to land on top.

A group of bears is appropriately known as a maul. What Does “A Maul of Bears” Mean? “Maul” is a blunt, physical word, and it points to the tension involved whenever normally solitary bears are forced into close proximity. Bears aren’t social animals by nature; most species live and hunt alone, and adult males in … Read more

A Pack of Bears

Cartoon animals struggling to hold a heavy Placeholder Image sign while a bird prepares to land on top.

A group of bears is appropriately known as a pack. What Does “A Pack of Bears” Mean? “Pack” is a term borrowed from far more social animals, wolves especially, and applying it to bears is a bit of a stretch biologically. Bears don’t hunt cooperatively or maintain the kind of coordinated social groups that define … Read more

A Sloth of Bears

Cartoon animals struggling to hold a heavy Placeholder Image sign while a bird prepares to land on top.

A group of bears is appropriately known as a sloth. What Does “A Sloth of Bears” Mean? “Sloth” is the older and more historically documented of the two similar-sounding bear collective nouns (the other being “sleuth”), generally believed to reference bears’ slow, lumbering movement, or possibly their reputation for spending long stretches inactive, especially heading … Read more

A Band of Gorillas

Cartoon animals struggling to hold a heavy Placeholder Image sign while a bird prepares to land on top.

A group of gorillas is appropriately known as a band. What Does “A Band of Gorillas” Mean? “Band” describes gorilla social life about as accurately as a collective noun can. Gorillas live in close, stable family groups typically led by a single dominant adult male, known as a silverback for the distinctive patch of silver-gray … Read more

A Woop of Gorillas

Cartoon animals struggling to hold a heavy Placeholder Image sign while a bird prepares to land on top.

A group of gorillas is appropriately known as a woop. What Does “A Woop of Gorillas” Mean? “Woop” is one of the more unusual and least documented collective nouns on this entire site, and we’d rather tell you plainly that we couldn’t verify a clear, sourced origin than invent a tidy explanation. It doesn’t appear … Read more