Animal names and collective nouns - patterns?

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elks??
Here's my theory. I'm guessing, but it sounds good to me:
A long time ago, when the human race as we knew it consisted of the Anglos and the Celts and the Saxons and the Gauls ...
Let's say for arguments sake that we mostly speak a form of English that evolved from Anglo. What animals were the Anglos familiar with, and how did they refer to them?
Well, it goes like this. Papa Anglo tells his wife: "Arrrgh, my wife, tonight we eat of the haddock."
Another night he says "We eat of the sheep".
Any creature that was typically netted or farmed in large number was typically referred to in the plural.... a usage which has persisted despite dropping "of the" in favour of "a" as our use of the language changed.
That suggests that animals like ducks and geese were mostly migratory at that time, not yet domesticated or farmed.
Farming moose could be problematic....Show more