Monday, September 5, 2011

Did You Know...

Someone sent this to me, and it made me chuckle. Regardless of what your politics are, I think you'll smile too.

The English language has some wonderfully anthropomorphic collective nouns for the various groups of animals.

We are all familiar with a herd of cows, a flock of chickens, a school of fish and a gaggle of geese.

However, less widely known is a pride of lions, a murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens), an exaltation of doves and, presumably because they look so wise, a parliament of owls.

Now consider a group of baboons. They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive and least intelligent of all primates. And what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons? Believe it or not ....... a congress!

14 comments:

Val said...

Also appropriate: a barren of mules.

Did you know they can't reproduce because they have an odd number of chromosomes? A mule gets half of its horse dad's 64 chromosomes, and half of its donkey mom's 62 chromosomes, for a total of 63. Please excuse that little outburst. I like to scatter science facts throughout the blogosphere whenever opportunity presents itself.

Dianna Graveman said...

How funny!

Tammy said...

Linda, I just loved this! What fun facts. Here's another one I looked up when my little pond got taken over by frogs...an army.

Kim Lehnhoff said...

Maybe we should send bananas to DC for their return to work on Wednesday!

Janet, said...

Interesting!

Sioux Roslawski said...

Finally, an explanation of why Congress is called Congress...What an apt name.

jabblog said...

Very apt!

Donna Volkenannt said...

Saw this one before and still laugh everytime I read it.
Donna

Lyndylou said...

ha ha priceless!

Lisa Ricard Claro said...

I've never seen this, but it's a riot! And so appropriate! LOL

Southhamsdarling said...

Good one Linda! Say no more!!

Anonymous said...

LOL! And I'll add my favorite....a clowder of cats!

Pat Wahler said...

Ha! How very fitting!

Pat
www.critteralley.blogspot.com

Debora said...

Now you've gone and insulted the baboons! They don't want to be associated with Congress, any more than the rest of us do! Love it!