Groups of Animals Trivia
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96 free Groups of Animals trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
What do you call a group of owls, flamingos, ferrets or jellyfish? This groups of animals trivia quiz is built entirely around collective nouns, the odd and often beautiful words English uses for animals in company. It runs from the ones almost everyone knows (a pride of lions, a gaggle of geese) through the crowd-pleasers (a murder of crows, a parliament of owls, a crash of rhinos) to the genuinely obscure: the word for cardinals, toucans, lapwings and skunks. A handful of questions flip the format and ask which animal a term belongs to, and a few cover where the words came from, including the 15th-century hunting book that invented most of them and why modern scientists rarely use them. It suits a family game night, a classroom vocabulary round or a pub quiz picture-free round, with easy openers and some real stumpers at the end. Every answer is checked against the documented lists of collective nouns rather than social-media graphics, and the same list is used throughout so alternative terms are noted in the explanations.
30 of 96 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is a group of crows called?
A murder
A murder of crows is the traditional term, though ornithologists rarely use it; winter crow roosts can number in the tens of thousands of birds.
Q 02What is a group of owls called?
A parliament
A parliament of owls is the popular term, though most owls are solitary hunters, so a real 'parliament' is a rare sight.
Q 03What is a group of lions called?
A pride
A pride of lions is the standard term; a pride is built around related lionesses, who even nurse one another's cubs, with one or a few adult males attached.
Q 04What is a group of geese on the ground called?
A gaggle
A gaggle of geese is the term for the birds on the ground; once airborne the flock takes a separate set of flight terms.
Q 05What is a group of geese in flight called?
A skein
A skein is first of all a length of coiled yarn, a fitting picture of the long trailing lines geese fly in.
Q 06What is a group of flamingos called?
A flamboyance
A flamboyance of flamingos is the popular term, with 'stand' the plainer one; over a million lesser flamingos can crowd an East African soda lake, drawn by the algae that thrive in its caustic water.
Q 07What is a group of ravens called?
An unkindness
An unkindness of ravens is the traditional term, one of the poetic inventions of 15th-century English hunting lists; like most of them, it probably never had any real use among hunters.
Q 08What is a group of larks called?
An exaltation
An exaltation of larks appears in 15th-century English hunting lists and gave James Lipton the title of his 1968 book on collective nouns.
Q 09What is a group of ferrets called?
A business
A business of ferrets is the traditional term, also spelled 'busyness'; in truth, ferrets sleep 14 hours or more a day.
Q 10What is a group of rhinoceroses called?
A crash
A crash of rhinoceroses is the popular term, and white rhino cows and calves do gather in groups of up to a dozen or so, while adult bulls mostly live alone.
Q 11What is a group of hippopotamuses called?
A bloat
A bloat of hippos is the popular term; hippos spend the day packed together in rivers and lakes and come ashore at night to graze.
Q 12What is a group of giraffes called?
A tower
A tower of giraffes is the popular term, though 'herd' is used just as often because giraffe groups are loose and change membership constantly.
Q 13What is a group of zebras called?
A dazzle
A dazzle of zebras plays on the idea that massed stripes make it hard for a predator to single out one animal; 'zeal' is another recorded term.
What is a group of jellyfish called?
Q 21What is a group of cockroaches called?
An intrusion
An intrusion of cockroaches is the term given in modern lists; like most such coinages it is more joke than working word, and scientists do not use it.
Q 22What is a group of ladybugs called?
A loveliness
A loveliness of ladybugs is the listed term; the beetles really do mass together, at times by the thousands, most often to sit out the winter in a sheltered spot.
Q 23What is a group of turkeys called?
A rafter
A rafter of turkeys is the traditional term; wild turkeys, large as they are, are fast fliers and roost in trees at night.
A smack
A smack of jellyfish is the traditional folk term; marine biologists usually say 'bloom' for a sudden jellyfish population explosion.
Q 15What is a group of porcupines called?
A prickle
A prickle of porcupines is the listed term, though porcupines live mostly alone: with quills like theirs, they have no need of a herd for protection.
Q 16What is a group of hedgehogs called?
An array
An array of hedgehogs is the term modern lists give; like most such coinages, it sees far more use in quizzes than among the people who study hedgehogs.
Q 17What is a group of penguins on land called?
A waddle
A waddle of penguins is the term for the birds on land; in the water the same group becomes a raft.
Q 18What is a group of wombats called?
A wisdom
A wisdom of wombats is the term modern lists give; wombat researchers rarely use it, since the animals are largely solitary burrowers.
Q 19What is a group of cheetah males called?
A coalition
A coalition is the biologists' term for male cheetahs, often brothers, that band together for life to hold a territory; females live alone.
Q 20What is a group of tigers called?
An ambush
An ambush of tigers is the popular term, with 'streak' as the alternative; tigers are solitary, so either word is almost purely literary.
Q 24What is a group of turtles called?
A bale
A bale of turtles is the traditional term; the grandest gatherings are the arribadas of ridley sea turtles, when thousands of females come ashore on one beach to nest.
Q 25What is a group of toads called?
A knot
A knot of toads is the traditional term; toads are loners for most of the year, but in spring they converge on breeding ponds in large numbers.
Q 26What is a group of foxes called?
A skulk
Skulk captures the fox's reputation for slinking; leash and earth are the other listed terms.
Q 27What is a group of hyenas called?
A cackle
A cackle of hyenas is the listed term; spotted hyenas really do produce a laughing call, and biologists call their social groups clans.
Q 28What is a group of lemurs called?
A conspiracy
A conspiracy of lemurs is the listed term; ring-tailed lemurs live in groups of up to 30, and it is the females, not the males, who are in charge.
Q 29What is a group of apes called?
A shrewdness
A shrewdness of apes is the traditional term, recorded in 15th-century English lists; 'shrewd' then meant wicked rather than clever.
Q 30What is a group of otters called?
A romp
A romp of otters is the traditional term; sea otters, which rest together afloat in single-sex groups, are said to form a raft instead.