الأحد، 12 أبريل 2015

99 strange collective animal names

RUSSELL MCLENDON

Science journalist blogs about humans and other wildlife.

Whether it's a shrewdness of apes, a pandemonium of parrots or a zeal of zebras, lots of animals have bizarre, little-known names when they cluster into crowds.

Mon, Jun 03, 2013 at 12:52 PM

A parliament of burrowing owls in Florida. (Photo: Tania Thomson/Shutterstock)

From social butterflies to solitary scavengers, virtually all animals gather into groups at some point in their lives. Herd immunity is one reason, since packs of prey are harder to attack, but many animals also use collective wisdom to make better decisions. Some even blur the line between individual and group, while others limit social time to mating season.

Regardless of what draws them together, something odd tends to happen when creatures form crowds: They're suddenly known by bizarre, often silly names. These group nouns are rarely used, even by scientists, but they nonetheless represent our own species' collective creativity for linguistics — not to mention our deep-rooted affinity for nature.

Taking the time to name a "richness of martens" or a "murmuration of starlings," for example, suggests a basic lack of contempt for the wildlife in question. Even our more derogatory labels, like an "obstinancy of buffalo" or an "unkindness of ravens," reveal a certain respect for the nonhuman neighbors that share our environment.

Without further ado, here are 99 of the strangest collective names we've given to animals:

Mammals and marsupials

A conspiracy of lemurs (Photo: Chris Gin/Flickr)

Apes: a shrewdness
Badgers: a cete
Bats: a cauldron
Bears: a sloth or sleuth
Buffalo: a gang or obstinacy
Cats: a clowder, pounce or glaring; for kittens: a kindle, litter or intrigue
Dogs: a litter (puppies), pack (wild) or cowardice (curs)
Donkeys: a pace
Elephants: a parade
Elk: a gang
Ferrets: a business
Fox: a leash, skulk or earth
Giraffes: a tower
Goats: a tribe or trip
Gorillas: a band
Hippopotamuses: a bloat or thunder
Hyenas: a cackle
Jaguars: a shadow
Kangaroos: a troop or mob
Lemurs: a conspiracy
Leopards: a leap
Lions: a pride or sawt
Martens: a richness
Moles: a labor
Monkeys: a troop or barrel
Mules: a pack, span or barren
Otters: a romp
Pigs: a drift, drove, sounder, team or passel
Porcupines: a prickle
Porpoises: a pod, school, herd or turmoil
Rabbits: a colony, warren, nest, down, husk or herd (domestic only)
Rhinoceroses: a crash
Squirrels: a dray or scurry
Tigers: an ambush or streak
Whales: a pod, gam or herd
Wolves: a pack, rout or route (when in movement)

Birds

An ostentation of peacocks (Photo: Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images)

Bitterns: a sedge
Buzzards: a wake
Bobolinks: a chain
Coots: a cover
Cormorants: a gulp
Crows: a murder or horde
Dotterel: a trip
Doves: a dule or pitying (specific to turtle doves)
Ducks: a brace, team, flock (in flight), raft (on water), paddling or badling
Eagles: a convocation
Finches: a charm
Flamingos: a stand
Geese: a flock, gaggle (on the ground) or skein (in flight)
Grouse: a pack (in late season)
Hawks: a cast, kettle (in flight) or boil (two or more spiraling in air)
Herons: a sedge or siege
Jays: a party or scold
Lapwings: a deceit
Larks: an exaltation
Mallards: a sord (in flight) or brace
Magpies: a tiding, gulp, murder or charm
Nightingales: a watch
Owls: a parliament
Parrots: a pandemonium or company
Partridge: a covey
Peacocks: an ostentation or muster
Penguins: a colony, muster, parcel or rookery
Pheasant: a nest, nide (a brood), nye or bouquet
Plovers: a congregation or wing (in flight)
Ptarmigans: a covey
Rooks: a building
Quail: a bevy or covey
Ravens: an unkindness
Snipe: a walk or wisp
Sparrows: a host
Starlings: a murmuration
Storks: a mustering
Swans: a bevy, game or wedge (in flight)
Teal: a spring
Turkeys: a rafter or gang
Woodcocks: a fall
Woodpeckers: a descent

Reptiles and amphibians

A maelstrom of salamanders (Photo: Bruce Delgado/U.S. Bureau of Land Management)

Cobras: a quiver
Crocodiles: a bask
Frogs: an army
Toads: a knot
Turtles: a bale or nest
Salamanders: a maelstrom
Snakes, vipers: a nest

Fish

A hover of trout (Photo: NCTC/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Fish in general: a draft, nest, run, school or shoal
Herring: an army
Sharks: a shiver
Trout: a hover

Invertebrates

A fluther of jellyfish (Photo: Michael Dawson/National Science Foundation)

Bees: a grist, hive or swarm
Caterpillars: an army
Clams: a bed
Crabs: a consortium
Cockroaches: an intrusion
Flies: a business
Grasshoppers: a cloud
Jellyfish: a bloom, fluther or smack
Lobsters: a risk
Oysters: a bed
Snails: a hood
Squid: an audience

17 surprisingly real animals

SHEA GUNTHER

Activist and author blogs about politics, energy and Earth's resources.

Tue, Apr 07, 2015 at 05:53 PM

Well, all except this one. (Photo: Mark Freeman/flickr)

Life can be strange.

When you take all the living creatures in the world and mix in a healthy dose of time (measured in millennia) along with a strong shot of evolution, you get some bizarre life forms. Of course, even strange things take on the air of the familiar with enough exposure, which is why the truly weird forms of life are the ones we never lay eyes on.

But thanks to the power of the Internet, there aren't many creatures left on the planet that we haven't seen in photos. We pored over the great catalog of life and pulled out 17 animals that you probably didn't know existed. Enjoy!

Red-lipped batfish

Photo: Barry Peters/flickr

The red-lipped batfish lives in the waters surrounding the Galapagos Islands and are known to be terrible swimmers — they get around by using their fins to walk on the sea floor. The red-lipped batfish makes our list for obvious reasons: they look like they just found their mom's lipstick!

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

Lowland streaked tenrec

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The lowland streaked tenrec lives in Madagascar and grows to be no more than 6 inches or so in length. Feeding mostly on earthworms and other insects, the streaked tenrec protects itself from predators with sharp barbed spines that grow out with its fur.

Japanese spider crab

Photo: Takashi Hososhima/flickr

The Japanese spider crab is the largest arthropod (animals with exoskeletons, a segmented body, and jointed limbs) in the world and can grow to be as large as 12 feet wide and 42 pounds in weight. As their name would suggest, they are found mostly in the waters surrounding Japan.

A man holds a giant Japanese Spider Crab up for inspection

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Tufted deer

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

I vant to suck your blood! Winning the award for the creepiest, yet cutest, species of deer is the tufted deer, a creatures that combines an adorable face with somewhat terrifying fangs that grow down from the top jaw and pointy little horns that are reminiscent of little devils. Tufted deer can be found in China and other parts of Asia.

Photo: Heather Paul/flickr

Glaucus Atlanticus

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

This animal is gorgeous and it knows it. The glaucus Atlanticus is a sea slug that spends its days floating upside down in the water (like in the photo below) feeding on prey like the Portuguese man-o-war. The little sea slug can absorb the stings of the tentacles and store the toxins to use for its own protection (which is why you should be careful about picking up them).

Photo: Sylke Rohrlach/flickr

Giant isopod

Photo: Damien du Tout/flickr

Whoever named the giant isopod didn't expend too much energy coming up with that name. In short, it's a giant isopod, a big giant crustacean that crawls around in the deeps of the Atlantic and Indian oceans.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Aye-aye

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The aye-aye is a species of lemur that lives on the island of Madagascar and it lives more like a woodpecker. To find food the aye-aye taps on trees to find buried insects and then gnaws a hole in the wood to allow them to reach in with their long thin fingers to grab the tasty treat.

Photo: Frank Vassen/flickr

Star-nosed mole

Photo: gordonramsaysubmissions/flickr

Looking a little like something like a boss from an old school Nintendo video game, the star-nosed mole lives in Canada and the United States and makes use of its strange flanged face to feel its away around the tunnels it digs. The star-nose is packed with nerve cells and is believed capable of detecting even subtle seismic waves traveling through the Earth.

Photo: gordonramsaysubmissions/flickr

Blobfish

Photo: James Joel/flickr

Another easily named animal! The blobfish lives in the deep waters around Australia and New Zealand and has adapted to its environment by evolving into a gelatinous mass of flesh with a density just above that of water. This allows it to easily float just off the sea floor deep below the surface. When the blobfish is pulled out of its deep water high-pressure environment, where they look more like the pictures below, they end up taking on the appearance seen in the photo above. Hence, the blob fish.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Goblin shark

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Of all the animals on our list, this is the one that I'd like to least run into while out for a swim. The goblin shark comes from an ancient line of sharks believed to have changed little in the last 125 million years. They can grow up to 13 feet in length and spend most of their time in deep waters near the sea floor looking for food.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Saiga antelope

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Sadly, the saiga antelope is a critically endangered animal that one ranged over Eurasia but has since been confined to a single region in Russia and a few in Kazakhstan. The antelope's rather large nose evolved to help it deal with filtering out dusty air in the summer and to warm freezing cold air in the winter.

Gerenuk

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The gerenuk looks a little like someone took an animal into Photoshop and shrunk its head. The graceful slender animal lives in Africa and has been called "the giraffe-necked antelope." As you can see in the photo below, it's not a poorly chosen moniker.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Dumbo octopus

Photo: NOAA Ocean Explorer/flickr

The dumbo octopus got its name from the cute little flappy ears (actually fins) found just above its eyes. Toss in the most adorable little tentacles you've ever seen and you get an animal that you could almost want to cuddle ... if you were a mer-person.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Pink fairy armadillo

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The pink fairy armadillo lives in Argentina and has evolved to enjoy life in the desert. These funny little creatures dig burrows in the soil and use the flattened part of their butts to compact the soil, greatly reducing the chances of a tunnel collapse.

Cantor's giant soft shelled turtle

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

OK, who left their turtle out in the sun to melt? The Cantor's giant soft shelled turtle is a large freshwater species that lives throughout Asia and can grow up to six feet in length.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Purple frog

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The purple toad can be found in southern India and is known for its fat, bloated body. Spending most of its life underground, the purple toad only comes to the surface for roughly two weeks every year to mate.

Okapi

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

You might think that the okapi, which can be found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was related to the zebra but it's actually a closer relative to the giraffe. The okapi was first brought to the attention of the western world in the late 1800s when explorer Henry Morton Stanley mentioned them in one of his popular travelogues. The first live okapi was brought to Belgium's Antwerp Zoo in 1918 and to the Bronx Zoo in the U.S. in 1937.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Babies' precious underwater portraits

Babies' precious underwater portraits shine a light on water safety

Tue, Apr 07, 2015 at 05:00 AM

After making waves with "Underwater Dogs" and "Underwater Puppies," it was only a matter of time before award-winning photographer Seth Casteel would be back in the game with another project. This time around, he's exploring the world of swimming babies! Casteel was inspired to tackle this new project after learning a shocking statistic: Drowning is the leading cause of accidental death for children under 5 years of age in the U.S.

"The hidden dangers of swimming pools continue to cause tragedies every single day, but these tragedies can be prevented," Casteel explains. "I saw photography as an opportunity to help."

With his beautiful new book, "Underwater Babies," Casteel hopes to encourage parents to learn more about the benefits of infant swimming lessons, which can reduce the risk of drowning for children under the age of 5 by 88 percent.

All of the babies in this charming series, including 5-month-old Zoe (above), are between 4 and 17 months old and were photographed during actual infant swimming lessons. At first, it might seem odd to give swim lessons at such a young age, but introducing your kids to an immersive water environment is quite beneficial at this age since a natural diving reflex (scientifically known as the bradycardic response) makes them significantly more resistant to drowning.

This important homeostatic mechanism causes babies to instinctively hold their breath when immersed in water (or during feedings to avoid getting milk in their lungs). In addition to the spontaneous breath control, this reflex also helps conserve oxygen when underwater by slowing the heart rate by 20 percent and reducing blood circulation to the fingers and toes. The bradycardic response usually wears off by the time babies hit their first birthday, so the sooner you can take advantage of this life-saving instinct as a learning tool, the better.

"Keeping our babies safe, whether they are fur babies or human babies, is our top priority," Casteel writes in the book's introduction. "They are our responsibility. We are their guardians. We are their voice. I urge anyone with a pet or a child to take all precautions to ensure their charges are safe around the water, and also to enjoy the magic that can happen when we partake in the water the right way."

Continue below for a peek at just a few of the shots featured in the book, and be sure to follow Casteel's latest updates on his website or Facebook.