Best German animal words

German compound nouns, Mark Twain wrote in his 1880 essay "The Awful German Language," are not words, "they are alphabetical processions."

The 19th-century American humorist and novelist suggested "the inventor of them ought to have been killed. They are compound words with the hyphens left out."

But if you click through the picture gallery above, you'll find that many compound words are clever concoctions that indirectly make use of the animal kingdom - like "donkey bridges" and "water roosters" - and have a history that goes back decades, if not centuries.

For a collection of animal-inspired quirky German words, click through the gallery above. The gallery below presents a look at unusual and funny German expressions that will change the way you see nature.