From prides of lions to pods of whales, discover the traditional and whimsical collective nouns for mammals.
🦔 Mammals · Collective Nouns What Is a Group of Armadillos Called? A tumbling, armored name that only fully fits one branch of the family. 💬 A group of armadillos is called a roll — though the animal most people picture, the nine-banded armadillo, can’t actually roll into a ball at all.
🐿️ Mammals · Collective Nouns What Is a Group of Chipmunks Called? A frantic, food-hoarding name for a rodent that would really rather be alone. 💬 A group of chipmunks is called a scurry, the same lively term used for their squirrel cousins. Chipmunks are solitary, territorial ground squirrels found mostly across North America.
A group of bears is occasionally known as a company. What Does “A Company of Bears” Mean? “Company” is one of the more generic old collective terms in English, applied loosely to several kinds of animals over the centuries rather than coined specifically for bears. It simply means a group keeping one another’s company, a … Read more
A group of bears is occasionally known as a drift. What Does “A Drift of Bears” Mean? “Drift” usually describes snow piled up by the wind, and it’s an apt, wintry image for a term applied to bears: several bears settling into the same snowy landscape as the cold sets in. Like most of the … Read more
A group of bears is playfully known as a hug. What Does “A Hug of Bears” Mean? “Hug” is one of the more whimsical entries on the bear collective-noun list, and it almost certainly grew out of the popular idiom “bear hug” rather than any documented field observation. A real bear hug is a defensive … Read more
📖 Collective Noun Lookup What Animals Form a Tower? No backstory needed — just the tallest land animal on Earth, standing exactly as tall as the name suggests. 💬 “Tower” is a collective noun for giraffes — one of the rare, purely literal collective nouns, describing exactly what a group of standing giraffes looks like. … Read more
📖 Collective Noun Lookup What Animals Form a School? Borrowed from fish for the rare moments dolphin pods merge into something much bigger. 💬 “School” is a collective noun for dolphins — a cross-species borrowing from fish terminology, used for the rare, large “superpod” gatherings that form when multiple dolphin pods temporarily merge. Quick Facts … Read more
