The bird that graces the tables of many families throughout the United States during Thanksgiving has far more to it than meets the eye, from its name through to the effect it has on you, or at least what you will tell everyone after having overstuffed yourself at every available opportunity. Turkeys have many interesting facts to share over your feast of gratitude or at least when you are too full to move, hence we at Sir Holiday felt that it was important to add to your knowledge on turkeys or at the very least provide conversation fillers for when your dear aunt/cousin/long lost relative strikes up a never-ending conversation. You never know this information might just save you over the festive season.

First off, the next time someone shouts out that turkeys are really just the overgrown cousins of chickens; you can safely tell them that they are in fact incorrect. Turkeys are an entirely separate species and science has shown that more than 45 million years of evolution have cut the species firmly apart. Next up, while your cousin is off describing her holiday, that she has already discussed a good 500 times over the past few months, why not jump in a fact about wild turkeys – however where you will go from here only you would know, maybe make a run to the kitchen? As for the wild turkeys they are a much easier situation to remedy, however the situation did not always look so hopeful. The wild turkeys were almost extinct in the beginning of the twentieth century; they were less than 30 000 running around within the wild forests of the USA, luckily though we have today managed to get the population of wild turkeys much higher to 7 million.

Now what happens if you don’t have any crazy or just insanely boring fellow attendees at your annual Thanksgiving get together and just want to sound rather clever during the festivities? Don’t worry, here is a couple to help you through as well, first off the turkey is a descendant of the infamous tyrannosaurs-rex and a turkey does not only have a beard, but they can have more than one.   Challenge someone to figure out where turkey’s ideal sleeping spot is; it will probably take them a while to come up with the answer of tree. Yes, a tree is in fact the preferred sleeping spot for turkeys, which might not be the most obvious choice considering their size, however when it comes to protection from carnivores it becomes clear as to why they would rather stay up in the trees. Perhaps even more interesting is that the female turkeys do not gobble at all, unfortunately only the male turkeys are capable of gobbling and each male turkey has their very own way of creating a gobbling sound, quite a unique bunch of birds, really. And while you are about to blame your sleepiness on the turkey, think again, all meat contains tryptophan, the sleep inducing hormone, in reality it’s probably all the extra carbs on your plate instead.

For all of your holiday information and more visit Sir Holiday today.

 

 

 

Wild turkey

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Male turkey wild

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