An Animal Group Project Trivia Quiz

Answer: Army

There's actually a handful of collective names for frogs though an 'army of frogs' would refer to a group of these mature amphibians. If all of these frogs were male, they would be a 'chorus of frogs', a phrase which may lean into the fact that male frogs will make a good amount of noise during their breeding season.

If you had a group of toads, you would refer to them instead as a 'knot of toads'.

Other animals using 'army' as their collective name include ants and (of all things) herring, which are also known as a glean or a shoal.

Answer: School

The collective word for a group of fish can either be a 'school of fish' or a 'shoal of fish', and in both cases, the phrase is derived from the same origin-- the Dutch word 'schole'. This is perhaps one of the most commonly used animal collective names and far from the weirdest. Fish, especially prey fish, are known to travel in schools for large parts of their life with the aim to find safety in numbers.

Generally, if a group of fish is congregated without coordination it's considered 'shoaling' but if they're moving in sync in the same direction, it's 'schooling'.

Other underwater creatures like dolphins and whale use the same word for their collective.

Answer: Business

Although all sorts of insects have different collective names (like a 'kaleidoscope of butterflies' or a 'cluster of dragonflies'), your general everyday flies are simply known as a 'business' or, more commonly in the modern day, a 'swarm', which bears little explanation.

But the reason behind the 'business of flies' is a good opportunity to bring up "The Book of St. Albans", a fifteenth-century text that outlines numerous old collective nouns used for animals of all-sorts. Part of its essays on hunting, the list of nouns there still persist in a large way, even today. The phrase 'a gaggle of geese', for instance, comes from its writings.

Answer: Scurry

Although squirrels typically live alone, it might not be uncommon to see groups of squirrels foraging or chasing each other around. A group of random squirrels seen together would be referred to as a 'scurry of squirrels'. You'd actually be more likely to come across a 'dray of squirrels', a collective term used for a squirrel found alongside its young in a nest or in the stages of development before the young squirrels go off on their own.

Answer: Pack

One of the animal groupings in this quiz had to be 'the pack' because it's a relatively popular umbrella noun generally used for animals in the canidae family. This means that a collective of any dog, wolf, coyote, or jackal would be referred to as a pack, especially if wild. Pack also happens to work as a collective of red pandas.

Dogs themselves have other collective terms as well, sometimes even for specific breeds. A group of boxers, for instance, is regarded in some breeding circles as a 'comedy of boxers'.

Answer: Ostentation

Sure, this phrase could apply to peacocks or peahens if you need it to, but there's something about the 'ostentation of peacocks' that just works. It's likely due to the fact that peacocks are known for their displays of feathers, known as a train, as they're fanned out to attract mates.

Peahens, however, are also known under the collective phrase 'a harem of peahens'. The reason for this is because while a peacock will often have multiple partners, multiple peahens will often settle for just one male when it's their time to breed.

Answer: Bed

Bivalve mollusks, oysters usually reside en masse on hard surfaces that build into reefs or, more commonly, 'beds of oysters'. Though oyster cultivation from these beds has been done for millennia, additional efforts have been made in the modern era to protect and replenish these habitats to ensure continual use.

After all, if over-harvesting or damage to these environments occurs, then we'd be making their bed...and lying in it.

Answer: Array

Although erroneously also considered a 'prickle of hedgehogs', the proper collective term for these small creatures is an 'array of hedgehogs'; prickles are actually groups of porcupines (and with reason!).

It would generally be rare to encounter an array of hedgehogs; these mammals keep to themselves under most circumstances, even when it comes time for them to mate.

Answer: Dazzle

This one's particularly interesting as the word dazzle, an extrapolation on the word 'daze', implies a sense of baffling confusion. It might be apt as zebras, normally herd animals, use their stripes to confuse and confound predators in the open savannah, causing prey to be unable to pick out single zebra from the group, especially when running.

Another collective term for the zebra is 'a zeal of zebras', though this has a bit less of a flourish.

Answer: Confusion

This collective phrase-- a 'confusion of wildebeest'-- is created from sheer numbers. The wildebeest of Africa migrate en masse on an annual basis, forming a massive herd of millions of pack animals. Naturally, that's confusing in and of itself. Predators might find it easier to locate prey since, after all, wildebeest are pretty big, and it's unsurprising for a grouping to panic in a time of crisis.

The result? Mass confusion. It's not uncommon for wildebeest to trample each other in the chaos of a chase in the open savannah.