Collective Nouns of the African Bush: What Do You Call a Group of Animals?

What is a group of giraffes called?

A group of giraffes is called a tower. It is one of the most perfectly chosen collective nouns in the animal kingdom — a word that captures not just the physical reality of several of the world’s tallest animals standing together, but something of the architectural, almost surreal quality of the sight. A tower of giraffes moving across the open floodplains of Khwai at golden hour is one of the quiet spectacles of a Botswana safari. You may also hear the term journey used — equally apt for an animal whose slow, loping walk covers extraordinary distances.

What is a group of elephants called?

A group of elephants is called a herd — though the more specific term is a memory, a collective noun that reflects the extraordinary cognitive capacity of elephants, whose matriarchs navigate by remembered landscapes, waterholes and migration routes accumulated over decades. Botswana holds the largest elephant population on earth, with over 130,000 individuals, and in the Okavango Delta and Chobe, herds of fifty, a hundred or more animals crossing the floodplains together are a genuinely common sight during the dry season.

What is a group of zebras called?

A group of zebras is most commonly called a dazzle — a reference to the disorienting optical effect that a large group of moving, striped animals creates for predators trying to single out an individual. It is also called a herd or, less commonly, a zeal. The dazzle effect is not merely picturesque — it is an active anti-predator strategy: when zebras bunch together at a waterhole or in motion, the overlapping stripe patterns make it genuinely difficult for a leopard or lion to lock onto a single animal long enough to initiate a chase.

What is a group of hippos called?

A group of hippos is called a bloat — a word that manages to be both anatomically accurate and mildly comic. Hippos accumulate gas as part of the fermentation process in their grass-heavy diet, and a pod of twenty or thirty animals lying packed together in a shallow pool, barely moving, glistening in the midday sun, does indeed give an impression of bloated contentment. The Okavango Delta’s channels and Moremi’s lagoons support some of the densest hippo populations on the continent. You may also encounter the term pod, which is the more commonly used field term.

What is a group of lions called?

A group of lions is called a pride — a collective noun so embedded in popular culture that it has almost ceased to feel like a real word. But it earns its place: a pride of lions, with its layered social hierarchy, its nursing females, its juveniles wrestling in the dust and its males stretched in regal indolence under a leadwood tree, genuinely does project something of the quality the word describes. In Botswana’s Kalahari and in Moremi, prides of eight to fifteen lions are regularly encountered. The Kalahari’s black-maned males are among the most impressive lions on the continent.

What is a group of leopards called?

A group of leopards is called a leap — though you are unlikely to ever see one. Leopards are among the most solitary of the large cats; adults come together only to mate, and even then briefly. The collective noun is essentially theoretical. In practice, the only groups of leopards you will encounter in the wild are a mother with cubs, which is its own reward entirely. In the woodlands of Moremi and the thickets along the Khwai River, leopard density is among the highest anywhere in Africa.

What is a group of cheetahs called?

A group of cheetahs is called a coalition — a term borrowed from political science that perfectly captures the nature of the arrangement. Male cheetahs, typically brothers from the same litter, form permanent alliances of two or three individuals that cooperate to hold territories and bring down larger prey than any single cheetah could manage alone. A coalition is not a family unit in the way a lion pride is — it is a strategic partnership between individuals who have calculated that collective action serves their interests better than solitude. In Botswana’s Central Kalahari and Savuti, male coalitions are one of the most sought-after sightings of any safari.

What is a group of wild dogs called?

A group of African wild dogs is called a pack — the same term used for wolves, which reflects the wild dog’s true identity as a canid rather than a hyena or cat. Wild dog packs in Botswana typically number between 6 and 20 adults, with larger packs during the denning season when the previous year’s pups have grown to sub-adult size. The Okavango Delta and Moremi hold one of the highest densities of wild dogs anywhere in Africa, with several habituated packs whose den sites are known to guides year after year.

What is a group of crocodiles called?

A group of crocodiles is called a bask when on land — a reference to their habitual thermoregulation, lying motionless in the sun for hours at a time — and a float when in water. Both terms capture the deceptive stillness that makes crocodiles so dangerous: an animal that appears to be doing nothing at all, utterly inert, can move from complete immobility to a strike in a fraction of a second. The Okavango’s channels and the Chobe River support Nile crocodiles of considerable size — individuals exceeding two metres are regularly recorded.

What is a group of zebras called — and why does it matter?

These collective nouns are not merely trivia. The best ones — a tower of giraffes, a coalition of cheetahs, a conspiracy of lemurs — encode genuine observations about the animals they describe. They are the product of centuries of close attention to behaviour, ecology and the quality of animals in groups, preserved in language long after the original observers are forgotten. Learning them before a safari is one of the small ways of arriving with your eyes already partly open.