What Does “A Company of Moles” Mean?
“Company” is a general social-group term applied to moles, though it’s worth noting upfront that most mole species are highly territorial and solitary outside of breeding, actively defending their tunnel systems against other moles and rarely tolerating close company for long. A genuine “company” of moles sharing space peacefully is the exception rather than the rule.
The main circumstances where moles do tolerate proximity are during mating encounters and when a mother is raising her young, who stay in her tunnel system for a period after birth before dispersing to establish and defend territories of their own. Given how fiercely solitary adult moles typically are, “company” reads more as a borrowed, generic collective-noun convenience than an accurate description of how moles actually prefer to live.
Example: “What looked briefly like a company of moles turned out to be a mother and her recently weaned young, still sharing her tunnel system.”
Related: Collective Nouns for Mammals