Alberta’s Spookiest Animal Collectives
Check out these haunting collective nouns for animal groups to get you in the Halloween spirit
Okay, trivia nerds, The Rockies.Life has collected some fun, weird, and sometimes chilling collective nouns for groups of Alberta animals, perfect for sharing with your friends at your upcoming Halloween party.
Things like, “What is a group of geese called?”
If they are waddling around on the ground, they are called a “gaggle of geese,” but if they are flying, they are called a “flock” or a “skein.”
“Gaggle” is a word known as a “term of venery,” a collective noun used to describe a particular group of animals.
So, let’s look at more frightening groupings of animals that may keep you huddled under your covers for days. We warned you!
Scary Groups of Birds
Flocks of birds have become scary in our consciousness ever since the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 movie The Birds, where birds relentlessly chased and attacked people in a California town. You can understand by the names below why attacking flocks of birds can be so terrifying!
A murder of crows
An unkindness of ravens
A mischief of magpies
A siege of herons
A parliament of owls
A convocation of eagles
A wake of vultures
A mutation of thrushes
A murmuration of starlings
A covert of coots
A cast of hawks
A quarrel of sparrows
A rafter of turkeys
A descent of woodpeckers
A cauldron of bats (technically not a bird, but a flying mammal)
A “swoop of swallows,” shown here, sounds pretty ominous | Alex Jones | Unsplash
Slithery, Slimy, Creepy Crawlers
Of course, movies or Hollywood do not need to turn cold-blooded animals into scary beasts that send chills up our spines. But surprisingly, scary group names for reptiles, amphibians and insects are few and far between.
A congress of salamanders
A rhumba of rattlesnakes
A knot of toads
An army of ants
An intrusion of cockroaches
A cloud of gnats
A scourge of mosquitoes
Furry and Maybe Not So Cuddly
Finally, we have our furry friends, or maybe a little less cuddly and a little more creepy in these cases.
A cete of badgers
A prickle of porcupines
A clutter of cats
A solitude of lynxes
A clowder of cougars
A boogle of weasels
A plague of rats
A skulk of foxes
A stench of skunks
A scurry of squirrels
Check [out this link](http://Check out this link for an even more extensive list of all things venery) for an even more extensive list of all things venery.
So there you have it, just a few strange and crazy names for groups of animals. Did we miss any?
By the way, what would you call a group of trick-or-treaters?
We like “a torrent of trick-or-treaters.”
What would you call them?
What would you call this group of ‘animals’? | AleksandarNakic | Canva
