WHAT’S IN A NAME?
A bale of turtles
THE TERM ‘BALE OF TURTLES’ DERIVES MOST likely from the shape they take when huddled together in their shells: a bale being a large wrapped or bound bundle typically of paper, hay or cotton. One well-recognised feature of some turtles is their desire to group and team up to stay safe. Their other collective nouns include dule (from the French ‘deuil’ and some think a corruption of ‘bale’) as well as turn, dole and nest.