Thanksgiving: the worst time of the year to be a turkey

46 million turkeys are eaten each Thanksgiving. And turkeys aren’t even delicious wtf!

46 million turkeys. That’s the number of turkeys eaten each year on Thanksgiving. But it doesn’t end there! An additional 22 million of these birds are eaten on Christmas and another 19 million turkeys on Easter (I guess rabbits should be thankful we don’t have a habit of eating rabbit meat during Easter??)

Image credit: Audubon.

88% of Americans surveyed by the National Turkey Federation (that’s a REAL FEDERATION!!) eat turkey on Thanksgiving!

Why the turkey craze in America?

Thanksgiving in a holiday mostly celebrated in the United States of America.

It seems that turkeys were a natural choice for a large family reunions dinner because the birds are so big.

And, because they're not usually raised for their eggs, like chickens are, it meant that turkeys were more expendable and affordable in the old days.

Image credit: The Spruce. When excited, a male turkey's head turns blue, when ready to fight it turns red. The long fleshy object over a male's beak is called a snood. Benjamin Franklin is said to have wished to have wild turkeys as the national bird of the USA, rather than the bald eagle!

And of course, the fact that wild turkeys are native to North America made them a natural choice to be served at early Thanksgiving celebrations.

Today, most Americans would agree a traditional Thanksgiving dinner consists of roast turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie!

The origin of Thanksgiving

The event that Americans commonly call the "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated around October 1621.

Fresh-off-the-boat European Pilgrims had settled in the ‘new world’ that was America and … befriended… the Native American people!

Image credit: Britannica. An illustration of the Mayflower ship that, in American colonial history, carried the Pilgrims from England to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where they established the first permanent New England colony in 1620.

After their historic first harvest in the New World in 1621, the pilgrims threw a wonderful feast that is said to have have lasted three days and was attended by 90 Wampanoag Native American people and 53 Pilgrims (survivors of the first Mayflower, an English ship that transported a group of English families to the New World)!

Let’s learn about the bird that feed so many people over Thanksgiving!

There are only two existing turkey species in the whole world - the Wild Turkey, found in North America, and the Ocellated Turkey, found in a small peninsula in Mexico.

Image credit: National Audubon Society. An Ocellated Turkey is a species of turkey residing primarily in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, as well as in parts of Belize and Guatemala.

Males of both these turkey species have a distinctive fleshy wattle, which is called a snood. Wattles are all sorts of fleshy parts that grow on birds. In these turkeys, it is the snood, but wattles also exist in male chickens and pheasants!

As with many large ground-feeding birds of their species family, the male Wild Turkey is bigger and much more colorful than the female.

Image credit: Birdwatching Magazine. The wild turkey is an upland ground bird native to North America.

The Wild Turkey species is the ancestor of the domestic turkey that we eat, and this species was domesticated an estimated 2,000 years ago - hey, that’s about the same time Jesus Christ was born!

And at least one Founding Father was fond of them: Benjamin Franklin touted the turkey as a “respectable bird” and a “true original native of America.”

In general, Wild Turkeys will travel in large flocks and search on the ground for nuts, berries, insects, and snails. Yum!

They use their strong feet to scratch leaf litter out of the way.

I think this is also why they are so easy to hunt, and therefore, eat. They are so large and hard to miss, with all the noise they make, and if you spot one bird, you’ll spot many more! Their habit of travelling in flocks, plus searching on the ground (instead of flying) makes them easy targets.

Why do these birds share the same name as the country Turkey?

I always thought it was just a coincidence, but there actually seems to be a reason!

There are two possible explanations for the name turkey. These were suggested by Mario Andrew Pei was an Italian-born American linguist and polyglot, who died in 1978.

1. The first theory suggests that when Europeans first encountered turkeys in the Americas, they incorrectly identified the birds as a type of guineafowl (the two species do look very similar!) These which were already being imported into Europe by Turkish merchants. The birds were therefore nicknamed turkey coqs. The name of the North American bird may have then become turkey fowl or Indian turkeys, which was eventually shortened to turkeys.

2. A second theory arises from turkeys coming to England not directly from the Americas, but via merchant ships from the Middle East, where they were domesticated successfully. Again the importers (the Turkish people) lent the name to the bird; hence turkey-cocks and turkey-hens, and soon thereafter, turkeys.

Image credit: Tes Randle Jolly. This is an adult female turkeys, also known ashens. Juvenile females are called jennies. Adult females average half the size of male turkeys!

I don’t know the definitive reason for their names, but I think it’s cool that the birds’ common name was kind of inspired by the country.

That’s it for today’s article. If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I want to wish you and your loved ones a wonderful holiday! And for everyone else, I also hope you have a wonderful November 24, just because.