[ConsiderCrying]

This gives me a chance to bring up my favorite collective noun for a group of animals: a bloat of hippopotami. Although a "dazzle" of zebras comes a second close. One of my favorite quirks of English, don't think other languages have our penchant for giving animal groups special names.

[dudeinjapan]

Japanese has 3 counting particles for animals. The generic one is 匹 "hiki" (ippiki, ni-hiki, san-biki) for dogs, cats, insects, fish, etc. Larger animals like horses and elephants use 頭 "toh" meaning "heads". Birds and rabbits use 羽 "wa" which means "wings." There are various theories why rabbits get counted the same as birds, possibly because rabbit meat tastes like chicken.

[aaco]

Other languages also have this exact same quirk, like Spanish[1] or Portuguese[2].

[1] https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nombre_colectivo [2] https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantivo_coletivo

[aspenmayer]

In English, these are called terms of venery:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#Terms_of_vener...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animal_names

[ConsiderCrying]

Wow, that is fascinating. I will have to use auto-translation but definitely saving these for an evening read, thank you.

[croisillon]

i thought those collective words were (mostly) a recent invention? https://medium.com/@Naturalish/the-absurd-truth-behind-colle...

[ConsiderCrying]

They are, sure, but they're really fun and some of them caught on. I think it's the exact kind of funny little thing we should encourage, language doesn't have to be serious.

[BurningFrog]

Yeah, nobody really uses 95% of those.

[philjohn]

Let's not forget a Murder of Crows.

[gonzo41]

Don't forget a wisdom of wombats.