Of course, the obligatory wildlife photos were shared with friends and family, inclusive of clever captions decrying their relevant animal groupings. The safari proved a singular travel experience that stayed with me long after I returned home. Australia’s ancient language shaped by sharks.Fits of puerile laughter, comparable only to schoolchildren discussing flatulence, ensued. ![]() “Look, they’re doing the business!” I exclaimed to my travel companions, a couple celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary. As I watched their valiant amorous activities, the temptation was ineluctable. The opportunity arose when we stopped to observe ‘a business of mongoose’. These collective nouns begged for further wordplay. But along came ‘a tower of giraffes’, ‘a confusion of wildebeests’ and, reposed contentedly under the blazing sub-Saharan sun, ‘a bask of crocodiles’. ‘A bloat of hippos’ was a witty and whimsical linguistic contrast to the almost Orwellian ‘nest of vipers’ and ‘murder of crows’ that I had always attributed to poetic license. My smile matched his as I laughed at how apropos the word seemed at describing this mass of bulky beasts. “A bloat of hippos!” he answered rhetorically with the grin of a man who knew this tidbit of information would delight his guests. “Do you know what those are called?” the safari guide at Botswana’s Chobe Game Lodge queried while I watched a large group of hippos unabashedly bathing in the waters of the Chobe River.
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