Talk:Herd

Do not move to wiktionary
Do not move to wiktionary, a herd or flock has an extremely important role to play in animal behaviour and can be analysed as such, it is more than a word. Dunc|&#9786; 11:46, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Duncharris. Also, kudos to Pgreenfinch! S/he did a superb job of reorganizing the Herd page from an "almost a wiktionary sort of entry" to a solid foundation for a true wikipedia page on the term "herd." Good on you.

Glad I could help and thanks for your kind appreciation --Pgreenfinch 13:03, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A 'flock' of geese?
In the caption to the first picture, it says 'a flock of geese'. However, isn't the plural noun for geese a 'gaggle'? I am changing it, but would appreciate feedback, rather than starting an edit war. D aniel (☎) 15:22, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
 * What I learned somewhere is that a flock of geese in the air can be called a "skein", and a flock on the ground or in the water can be called a "gaggle". Thus your change is correct.  However, I agree with the people who say that most such collective nouns are fanciful and there's no real need to go beyond "herd", "flock", "pack", "school" or "shoal", "colony", "swarm", and maybe "covey" and "troop" and "pod" and "pride".  So I wouldn't have changed "flock of geese", but I'm not going to change "gaggle of geese" either.  —JerryFriedman 18:00, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Would this be an appropriate location for a listing of herd terms? I don't see such a list on WikiPedia, or Wiktionary. Steve8394 (talk) 07:06, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

This is my first contribution so forgive me if I am mis-posting this. I came here looking for terms like pod, pride, school, gaggle, etc as they relate to groups of various animals. Therefore I think this would be a very appropriate place for such a list as is mentioned by Steve8394. That's all.TMFK626 (talk) 04:03, 22 October 2015 (UTC)-

Three (or more?) Wikipedia articles on herding?
I just added herd behavior and herding instinct to the See also section, as they are both clearly related Wikipedia articles. In my view, we need to shrink these three articles (those two plus this one on just plain herd) into no more than two articles. There is already a discussion going on at Talk:Herd behavior on the possibilty of a merge. I weighed in on that issue over there. However, since I only recently became aware of this WP article herd, it looks like we should be looking at all three when considering how to clean up the group of them. Input from others would be helpful. How ought we organize the entire group? N2e 04:15, 1 November 2006 (UTC)


 * After reading the three articles you mention, I see how thorny the question is. It seems to me that the difficulty comes mostly in trying to sort out human herding from herding among animals in general. So, what if herd behavior and herding instinct were joined as one article under "Human herding", since that's what those articles are mostly about anyway? This way you could leave the herd article as is, since it's mostly about animal herding.
 * Rgfolsom 14:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Seems a good idea to have a specific Human herding article which would reunite most of the texts in herd behavior and herding instinct. --Pgreenfinch 22:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems there is now a consensus on how these three articles ought to shake out: one article on human herding, and one (this one) on just plain herd] over in the [[Talk:Herd behavior page.  N2e 01:46, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Why do animals herd? section, expert attention requested
The statement "It is generally believed that the most important protective factor is risk dilution" is unsourced and to me it doesn't make sense. A hungry cheetah is going to eat just an many antelope in a herd as scattered individuals. In fact, probably more because the antelope are gathered together in a buffet instead of hiding. I found a more reasonable explanation at but this isn't a reliable source. This isn't my area of expertise, which is why I'm trying to find the answer here, and it would be appreciated if someone who knows this subject could fix the section.RDBury (talk) 15:03, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I had the same thought. In a herd the probability of being caught by a predator during a confrontation with a predator is lower but the number of confrontations is higher by exactly the inverse factor, unless of course there are secondary effects such as the herd coordinating defense or predators getting confused by, for example, the movement of a large number of striped zebras or darting fish. So I'm removing that sentence. 89.99.122.33 (talk) 20:11, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Conversely, I think it would enhance the article to distinguish "herds" from "groups of animals that do not exhibit herding behavior". On streams & in swamps, turtles may congregate on sunny logs or rocks, but they certainly don't behave as a herd, so the distinction seems relevant. Steve8394 (talk) 07:11, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Photo - 'Boy Herding Sheep'
I might be a city boy, but those look like goats to me. LorenzoB (talk) 05:12, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

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