My son has been learning about animal classification in school recently.
His favorite thing about it has been all the weird and wonderful collective names for groups of animals.
There are so many he’s been excited to tell me about—a murder of crows, a parliament of owls, a sleuth of bears.
There are so many inventive and creative names for different groups of animals—whether or not these names are truly “scientific” or not.
He asked me, though, if there was a similar name for large groups of goats.
The thing to remember about these names is that they’re really just popular classifications people have come up with.
As I say, they’re really fun, and I think a tribe of goats is an interesting idea—almost making them like a family.
But when it comes to hard science, they are a herd just like many other herd animals like gazelle or cattle.
Let’s look further into this.
What do you call a group of goats?
You have three options.
The simplest is herd.
Everyone will understand what you mean when you say a herd of goats—whether it’s the simplest farmer, or a corporate researcher leading a study on goat populations in the thousands.
Herd is universally accepted as a collective term for goats.
One of your other options is tribe.
They are commonly referred to as a tribe of goats, meaning many goats together.
There are a number of possible origins of this term, which I will get into.
This is a widely known term for a group of goats, though it is less likely others will understand what you mean if you choose this term over herd.
We also quite commonly refer to a group of goats as a trip.
This is a more European term, and there are reasons for this in the origins of the term.
Again, I will get into them shortly.
So, you have your choice of these three terms.
For the sake of ease of communication where it’s needed, I would recommend simply referring to them as a herd.
Like I say, everyone will understand you this way.
Let’s look at the possible origins of these terms.
Why are they called a tribe?
The origin of tribe is perhaps the least clear, and how groups of goats came to be called this is something of a mystery.
There a number of theories, though, which I will get into.
The simplest answer is that humans recognized the herd-nature of goats, and how they needed to live together in large groups in order to be properly happy.
Humans, in their earliest manifestations, must have thought of themselves this way.
They lived in large family groups—tribes.
Goats need their tribes to be happy just as we do.
Again, though, this is merely a hypothesis.
We aren’t really sure where the term comes from.
Given that they’ve always been referred to as herds, and only colloquially as tribes, we will probably never know for sure.
The term we are a bit surer of is ‘trip’, so let’s look into that.
Why are they called a trip?
Just to caveat this right away—again, we aren’t sure.
We only can hypothesize, as no one at the time wrote down these terms.
They came about into popular use orally.
That said, the term ‘trip’ is a much more northern European term, often used in Germanic countries like Denmark, the Netherlands, and parts of the U.K.
It is believed that the term ‘trip’ comes from the Dutch word trippen, meaning to skip or hop.
Goats do have such a gait, skipping and hopping around a lot of the time.
It is theorized that goat herders came to call their goats this as they skipped and hopped down the trails.
Again, though, we can only theorize—we don’t know for sure.
What about the term ‘flock’, then?
Are goats a herd or a flock?
Goats are a herd; sheep are a flock.
This is the simple answer.
‘Flock’ is more commonly associated with sheep largely due to religious influence.
Don’t underestimate the Biblical influence on language.
In the Bible, God is the shepherd of his flock—this always referred to sheep since sheepherders play a larger role in Biblical symbology.
In any case, a group of goats wouldn’t generally be referred to as a flock.
They are a herd, and sheep are a flock.
The simplest, best, and most catch-all term for a group of goats is the simplest one—herd.
Goats are interesting animals, historically speaking.
They have played a direct role in our domestic life for as long as any other animal.
We’ve been farming them for perhaps 12,000 years, and hunting them for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years.
They’ve very much secured a place in collective psyche, and so in some ways you can understand why they might be called a tribe—like our own tribes of old.
The trip term, though, seems more straightforwardly a description of their movement.
Herd, though, is the simplest term if you can’t remember these ones.