The army ordered the zoo to kill all the wild animals. It thought that the animals would get away and harm people if a bomb hits the zoo.
Is it grammatical to use the verb 'thought' to refer to an action of a collective group referred to with the pronoun 'it' in the second sentence? Or is it more proper to say that "the members of the army thought..."?
Answer
"It" is ambiguous. A reader might not immediately understand what "it" is.
A simple solution would be:
The army ordered the zoo to kill all the wild animals, thinking that the animals would get away and harm people if a bomb hits the zoo.
This would remove any danger of a reader being confused.
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