Thanksgiving Special: Turkeys

Alex Re

Hello, welcome to on wildlife. I'm your host, Alex Re. On this podcast, we bring the wild to you. We take you on a journey into the life of a different animal every week. And I guarantee you, you're gonna come out of here knowing more about your favorite animal than you did before. This is a special episode because we're getting into the Thanksgiving spirit. You can probably guess what this episode is going to be about. So keep an ear out for some gobbles because we're heading into the forests to talk about turkeys.

Unknown Speaker

So turkeys are found in North America and Canada, and they tend to live in wooded areas. And there's actually six different subspecies of turkeys today. wild turkeys weigh around 30 pounds, and males are usually a little bigger than females. But domesticated turkeys can get a lot bigger than that. And later on in the podcast, we're going to talk about why that is, and their wingspan can get up to around five feet long. And contrary to popular belief, wild turkeys can actually fly. They only fly for around 100 meters at a time, but they can hit amazing speeds of flying turkey can reach speeds of up to 55 miles per hour. And this is actually similar to a cheetah, which can hit really fast speeds but only for a short period of time. But turkeys bodies were really meant for walking and running, not flying, which is why they have such powerful legs. And although they're much better suited for the ground. turkeys actually like to sleep in trees at night. And this is in order to avoid predators. turkeys have a lot of natural predators like foxes, snakes, mountain lions, owls, coyotes, and many more. It's truly a strange sight to see such a huge bird sitting on the branch of a tree. But even if a predator doesn't get to them, they still don't really have that long of a lifespan. They only live for around three to five years. But the turkeys been in North America for a really long time. Around 40 million years in fact, and Ben Franklin actually recognize the turkeys prominence in America by calling it more respectable than the bald eagle and a true native of America. I'm not really sure anyone else holds turkeys in such a high regard. Because this is the Thanksgiving episode. I thought it would be interesting to talk about why turkeys are the food of choice for this day. For starters, Turkey wasn't actually served on the first Thanksgiving way back in 1621. They probably didn't have any cranberry sauce either. Turkey started to become popular to eat around Thanksgiving in the 1800s because it was pretty inexpensive. And there were just so many of them around. Their populations later declined, but we're going to talk about that later on in the podcast. And on top of all that, a writer named Sarah Josepha Hale wrote about having turkey for Thanksgiving in one of her books. And by the way, she was also the one who helped make Thanksgiving a national holiday. These are all reasons why we eat turkey on Thanksgiving today. So turkeys are omnivores. They anything from nuts to berries to insects, though most of their diet consists of plants and fruits. And they're mostly scavengers, meaning that they walk around for a large portion of the day and eat things that they find. They spend most of their day just looking for food. And just like most birds, they swallow their food whole because they don't have the teeth to chew their food with. And they have a structure called their gizzard and that helps them break the food down. The gizzard is a part of their stomach, and it basically grinds up the food that's been swallowed. And turkeys will even eat rocks and sand in order to help with the digestion of their food. Chances are if you see a turkey, it's not alone. They like to spend their time in family groups, especially when they're on the search for food. Female turkeys form groups with their offspring. And if their group is too small, they can start to form groups with other turkeys. And they actually have a social hierarchy in these groups. That's really important to them. Okay, we're going to take our first break, and when we get back, I'm going to start talking about the most iconic turkey sound, but gobble. Time for the trivia question. How fast does a hummingbird's heartbeat per minute. A 100 beats per minute, be 500 beats per minute, c 700 beats per minute, or D 1200 beats per minute?

Unknown Speaker

The answer is D 1200 beats per minute. To put that into perspective, human hearts only beat around 60 beats per minute.

Unknown Speaker

All right, so we're back. turkeys are most well known for their gobbling sound. And this sound is usually used by males in order to attract female turkeys in the area. And aside from this gobbling sound, turkeys can make a whole bunch of other vocalizations too. For example, a female in charge of her group will use an assembly call in order to get all the members of the group together. They can also clock her and cackle. But let's get back to the gobbling because I want to talk about Turkey mating. Female turkeys are very picky about their mates. And some might call them superficial because they really only care about looks. They usually pick which mail to mate with based on the size of their snood. And no, I'm not making this word up. There. snood is a dangly piece of flesh that hangs over the beak of a male. And females are more likely to mate with males who have a longer snood. And there's a few reasons why size matters to these females. Scientists have observed that males with longer snoods have a better immune system and fewer parasites. This means that females use the snood as an indicator to see what male is going to help them make babies that are the most suited for their environment. And something really interesting is that turkeys can actually change the color of their snood. Aside from their snood size, turkeys also have mating behaviors, just like a lot of other birds. After attracting a female using his loud Gobble, the male Turkey will puff out all of his feathers and do a little dance to show himself off. The male's feathers are pretty colorful, unlike the females feathers, and Turkey feathers are iridescent, meaning that when the light hits them, they kind of shine a specific color, and male turkeys will actually fight for mates, and the dominant male usually gets to pick which female he wants to meet with. But turkeys are polygamous, so they'll meet with more than one other individual. Although turkeys can fly for short periods of time, and sleep in trees, they actually build their nests on the ground. And they don't take things from other areas to build their nest like a lot of other birds, but make a very shallow hole out of the dead plants and leaves that are around the area to lay their eggs. Their eggs are a little bigger than chicken eggs. And they can lay from four to 17 eggs at a time. And because they don't lay as many eggs as chickens, and they're very territorial, people don't really use turkey eggs for human consumption. turkeys also have really great vision. It's three times better than humans. And instead of having binocular vision, like humans, turkeys have monocular vision. This means that they can use their eyes separately instead of together. But they can also turn their heads really well, meaning that they can see most things around them at all times. This is extremely helpful for keeping a watchful eye out for predators, and also for finding prey more easily. They not only have great eyesight, but they also have a really keen sense of hearing too. Many scientists believe that they can hear at lower frequencies than humans and from much further away. This makes up for their poor sense of smell, which is actually common in most birds. Have you ever heard the saying that you shouldn't touch a baby bird because the mother will reject it? If it has your scent? This is completely false. We're going to take our last break. And when we come back, I'm going to talk about domesticated turkeys, and also turkey conservation.

Unknown Speaker

If you want more information about turkeys, or you just want to suggest a new animal for me to talk about, you can email on wildlife dot podcast@gmail.com You can also visit our website@www.on wildlife.org. Okay, so we're back and we're going to start talking about domesticated turkeys. And they're a lot different than wild turkeys for a few different reasons. First of all, the domesticated Turkey is much larger than its wild counterpart. And this is due to the fact that domesticated turkeys are bred to be eaten by humans, so we want them to be as big as possible. In fact, the average size of a domesticated turkey today is two times larger than the size of a domesticated turkey 60 years ago. It's not because we're adding hormones to the diets of turkeys, which is actually illegal in the United States. It's a process called artificial selection. And humans have been doing this for 1000s of years and not just with turkeys. Basically, people will take the largest turkeys in a population and breed them together. And this goes on for generations. So turkeys keep getting bigger and bigger every year. And this is actually how we got a lot of the fruits that we have today. Over 1000s of years, we've taken the most desirable fruits to eat and bred them together to make them even better to eat. And because domesticated turkeys are so fat, they've actually lost the ability to fly. In the United States alone, over 200 million turkeys are eaten every year. But unfortunately, turkeys along with other farm animals are in humanely kept. A lot of the time. They're kept in extremely confined spaces that are just unsanitary. This isn't good for the turkeys, or for the people that eat turkey. Aside from the fact that animals kept in unsanitary conditions can spread diseases to people who eat them. turkeys are also smart social animals that need and deserve humane treatment. And wild turkeys play a really important role in the ecosystem that they live in. First of all, as I stated before, they are a food source for a lot of different organisms. And not only that, but they're also great at population control as they eat insects and small mammals. In the early 19 hundred's wild turkeys were almost brought to extinction. It's thought that the turkey population declined from millions to just a couple 100,000. And this is because of two main reasons over hunting and habitat loss. turkeys have been an important food source for people dating all the way back to before Europeans made their way to North America in the 1600s. But as the colonists came here, they started over hunting the turkeys and cutting down forests, which are where turkeys live to build homes. Luckily, because of hunting restrictions and conservation efforts, the wild turkeys were able to make a good recovery. This to me is a great example of how it's not too late to start caring about the conservation of organisms. Life is resilient. And if we're helping to preserve the habitats of these animals, it can really make a difference. Turkey populations are not currently in danger. But it is important to advocate for the welfare of these animals in captivity and also preserve their habitats. That's why you should take a look at some important organizations that are doing just that. There's the RSP ACA, the National Forest Foundation, and compassion in world farming USA. Thank you so much for coming on this adventure with me as we explored the world of turkeys. You can find the sources that we used for this podcast and links to organizations that we reference@www.on wildlife.org and that's on wildlife.

Jess Avellino

You've been listening to on wildlife with Alex re brought to you every Wednesday.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai