November 26, 2020 • 46 mins
Turkeys are a very interesting bird as it turns out. Which may be why many people are leaving it off their Thanksgiving table this year. Learn all about them right now!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios, How Stuff Works, Gobble Gobble, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and there's Jerry Jero Roland. Couldn't come up with anything
in the last second, that's all right, and this is
(00:22):
Stuff you Should Know about turkeys. Yeah, so I need
to just apologize at the beginning of this episode because
I could not help and I know I will not
be able to help myself from making Vernon Florida references
the Great Great documentary from Errol Morris, one of the
prominent about the citizens of Vernon, Florida in the nineteen
(00:44):
eighties and Inland, Florida, panhandled small town and one of
the lead characters and in that documentary was Mr Henry Ships.
He was a turkey hunter and all he does is
talk about turkey hunting. And I know it by heart,
me and all my friends know it by heart, and
we quoted a lot. So it's really really hard not
(01:06):
to just talk like Henry Ships. So I'll try not
to because it's so random that the people it won't
be worth it for like the hundred people that will
think that's the best thing ever. I don't know, man,
I've found over the years that it's good to cater
those people sometimes too. You know, I might throw in
an occasionally and I'll explain what I'm talking about maybe,
(01:27):
But um, we do need to thank the Humane Society
for what The bulk of this research came from this
really great, great, great article that someone nameless person that
the Humane Society put together from a list of great,
great sources. So I was surprised to see something so thorough.
It was really great. It was written by the mysterious
Tom t It was really in favor of turkeys suspiciously.
(01:54):
And now I'm Thanksgiving day two, So we also need
to apologize for We're not trying to guilt you or
anything like that. Maybe to listen to this one for
a week, I will say the chuck like, I'm not
eating turkey anymore after this. And it's really kind of
a pain because turkey is my favorite. My favorite meat
of all time is turkey. I know, I'm sorry. Then, Uh,
it is tough. I knew turkeys were pretty cool and
(02:16):
pretty smart, um, but it's it is. It is tough
to read this stuff and still slice into that bird. Well,
it's funny to hear that they are smart, because they
have such a great reputation for being just totally stupid.
But it turns out that that's really not right at all.
It's at at best a human misinterpretation, maybe at worst
cynical um justification for eating them. Um. But one of
(02:40):
the first things that will remark about turkeys right out
of the gate, that a lot of people don't know
is that Ben Franklin was more in favor of turkeys
as America's national emblem as far as birds go, than
he was the bald eagle. He had a big problem
with the fact that um eagles don't necessarily hunt as
much as bully other birds for whatever they just hunted. Um.
(03:04):
He said that the eagle does not get his living honestly,
he steals from the fishawk and it's too lazy to
fish for himself. The turkey, however, is much more respectable
a true original native, and a turkey would not hesitate
to attack a grenadier of the British Guard who should
presume to invade his farmyard. And after researching turkeys, um,
(03:25):
I daresay he was probably right about that. Yeah, and
the other thing that I'm surprised he didn't mention was
and also by the way, male turkeys during the breeding season,
literally their head and neck turns red white and blue. Yes,
I noticed that too, Like that is so obvious, such
an obvious pick. Like at one point during the year,
(03:45):
you've got a red white and blue bird. Yeah, exactly,
let's see a bald eagle do so. The other thing,
the other reason why um, And I think a lot
of people think that Franklin said that that that that
needed to be like the Great Seal of the United States,
and that's not the case. He instead, i think, proposed
(04:06):
Moses is the Great Seal um, which is odd. But
another check in Ben Franklin's pro turkey stance is that
turkeys are indigenous to North America and there's actually we're
down to two species. UM. One the common turkey, which
is the kind that you or I or anybody else
living uh north of Mexico are familiar with. UM. They're
(04:31):
all over the place. They're all over the United States
and Canada. UM. But the weird thing is there's also
turkeys in Central and South America, and it turns out
that there are really hardy, adaptable species, and again way
smarter than than you probably give them credit for. Yeah,
I mean turkeys they do like warm weather, but there
(04:51):
they can survive in a lot. Like you said, I
remember very distinctly when I lived in New Jersey one uh,
snowy morning looking into my backyard and there were it
was like a painting or something. There were three deer
in six wild turkey just walking together through the snow
in the backyard. And Um, I didn't know that they
(05:12):
would venture that far north, but they're all over the place.
Um they are. Uh did you say the name of
the ones in Mexico? The oscillated turkeys in the Yucatan
Peninsula and Guatemala and Belize. They are different looking than
the turkeys we know. They're smaller, a little shorter, they
(05:32):
have sort of a copper bronze copper bronze green plumage.
And I think the male turkeys have larger spurs and
do not have beards. And will explain what all that
is in a minute. Yeah, So if you're talking, if
you're talking turkey, specifically male turkey, another term former gobblers
(05:53):
or tom's for young young males, they're called Jake's. Love
that and then adult females are hens, and then hatchlings
babies of both sexes um are called poults p o
u l ts. Yeah, the adult female is going to
be about eight to eleven pounds, adult males about seventeen
to twenty one. Um. We mentioned you know, if you
(06:16):
look at a turkey, they've got all kinds of crazy
stuff going on on their head. They look they look like,
you know, something from a zombie movie. And and every
single adult turkey has what's called carnicles, a snood sounds
like Dr Seuss, and a do and a dow lap.
The carnicles are those those big fleshy things at the
(06:37):
bottom of the neck. The snood is the stuff that
protrudes from the top of the head and sort of
flaps over across the bill. And then that do lap
is that little thin skin under the throat that's so
uh tuggable. Yeah. And if it's just one thing of
skin that goes vertically down the neck in the front,
(06:58):
it's a do lap. If it has more than one, um,
it's called the wattle. But these these things, the coronicles,
the snood, and the dow lap are the things that
make turkeys outrageously ugly to humans. But ironically those are
the things that attract other turkeys. They like you said,
(07:18):
change color. They're unique to each turkey. Um, and they
are are like apparently if you're a female turkey, you're
looking for a guy with a longer snood. That's an
attractive thing to you. So I just find that really
great that like we're like that. It's just those things
are just so ugly. They could stop clock and to
(07:39):
the turkey, it's like, man, nice snood, buddy, you're looking good. Yeah.
And I think chronicle, snood and dow lap would be
like a great name for a comedy bluegrass trio that
would be on he Hall or something. Oh my. Uh
So the beard that I mentioned to Uma with Burning
(08:00):
Florida reference no no um. For most turkey strains, the
males are the only ones who have a beard, and
that is this. It's a feather. It's a modified feather
sort of in the upper chest that keeps growing. It's
like a you know, if you have a one of
those rat tails actually want to grow out for life.
(08:23):
A lot of heat Hall references. I guess they grow
about three to five inches a year. And if Vernon
Florida is to be um is for in Florida, is correct?
Then Mr Ships would point out that the longer the beard,
the more sort of prize trophy it is. If you're
a turkey hunter, like that'd be akin to a large
rack of antlers because they mount the beard on a
(08:45):
little plaque. Um right. Uh. The other thing about male
turkeys that you can differentiate from a female, Um, Well,
females have feathers that go up the back of their head,
so it looks like they have a little mullet going on.
Males do not. They have a bear head. And then
males also have spurs like um do claws almost coming
(09:07):
off of their legs and uh, hands typically don't right,
And like I said, those males during breeding season they turn.
The carnicles go red, the white is the crown of
the head, and then the neck on the side of
the face go blue. And there's just nothing more American
than that. It's true. But that's just the gobblers, right.
(09:30):
The hands don't turn. Yeah, so um, like you said,
and I think I said first, you can find turkeys
all over the place and all sorts of different conditions. Um,
whether it's hot out, whether it's covered in snow, whether
there's deer around, who cares. Turkeys are down for hanging out. Um.
They just need, or I should say, prefer, certain kinds
(09:54):
of habitats um huge trees in a mature forest, and
typically they want mass bearing trees and mast. I don't
remember what we were talking about recently. Oh, I think
it was squirrels hiding nuts. Mast is like one of
my favorite words of all time. It's just so earthy
and natural. I just love it. Um. But it means
like acorns and um, like tree nuts that that you
(10:17):
can find in North America. And that's one of the
things that turkeys e. So they need lots of trees
that have lots of masts. And the other thing is
that trees are roosting sites turkeys. Although they're not typically
thought of as able to fly, they can't fly for
short distances and they roost in trees at night, which
I don't think I've ever seen a turkey in a tree.
(10:38):
I haven't either. Um, you know, I see turkeys quite
a bit on the side of the road or taking
hikes and stuff like that. But I guess it's because
at night. I'm not hiking at night that I have
never seen a turkey in a tree. Well, sure, yeah,
because they're diurnal, right, Well, yeah, I'm just saying that
that must be the reason. Like I always see turkey
sort of just pecking around on the trail. I think
(10:59):
that's the I was laughing because you said you made
it sound like the turkeys were hiking going on. Well,
they're technically, I guess I can see in with like
big chunky socks on and vast boots. Just being all serious,
but you mentioned their range. Their home range is what
it's called, and their home range is dictated by how
much food is around, how much of that mast is around,
(11:20):
and if they you know, they have pretty big ranges anyway,
but if there's a lot of food around, then they
may maintain like four hundred to a thousand acres, which
is huge, and that's if it's abundant. If they don't
have a lot of food around, they have been known
to maintain ranges of eight thousand acres or more and
travel up to fifty miles to different home ranges if
(11:43):
they can't, like they don't, uh, technically they don't migrate.
But the birds maintaining eight thousand acres and traveling fifty
miles they're they're migrating around kind of. Yeah, but I
mean that must be a really poor habitat because turkeys
are not picky eaters. Um. In addition to mast, they'll
eat everything from seeds to lizards and basically anything they
(12:04):
find that chock full of protein. They typically like things
like seeds, plants, fruit berries, that kind of stuff. But
they'll eat live animals um. Lead snake, Yeah, they lead
a snake. They'll lead into crazy yep. And and and then
particular when a turkey is born, the young turkey, the
poult for the first week or two of their life,
(12:24):
they're eating nothing but insects constantly. Yeah, And you know
that's why they prefer a range. Uh. They like that forest,
but they like the forest on the edge of some
grassy areas because that moves them. They get some closer
to those little insects that you're going to find for
those pols, right exactly. And that's actually where pols are
born and raised is in the grassy area at the
(12:45):
edge of a forest, which is pretty cool and just
quaint is all get out. It's so it's like cottage
core for animals, you know. Yeah. Uh, if you think
you that they may need to live near a lake
or something to get their water, or a river or
stream or any kind of wetland. You're wrong. Um, I'm
sure they love that kind of scenery, but they don't
need it for water. They can get water their water
(13:08):
intake from vegetation. They can get it from that morning
do um, succulent insects, little small pools. Um. They can
kind of forage through all that stuff to get enough water. Yeah.
I mean, like when there's like a lot of snow
on the ground, they don't hiberdate or anything, but they
go into like this kind of like uh, just hanging
around the tree for chill mode time. Yeah, chill mode
(13:29):
for sure. And the water intake is just a little
bit of snow that they're eating off of the tree,
and the food is maybe just a butt or two
that they can find on the tree they're sitting on. Yeah,
and you know they do well. Turkeys are thriving, They
eat a lot. They One thing you will not see
very much unless they're sick is a skinny turkey under nurse.
(13:51):
Turkeys are pretty rare, like I said, unless there's some
sort of disease or maybe if it's like in the
middle of a really really long winter, they might the
thin up a little bit. But turkeys eat a lot
and they're they're generally pretty healthy and plump, right. Um.
So like we said, they're diurnal, right, they they are
active during the day just like us humans. Uh. And
(14:13):
you said they eat a lot, So they spend a
significant amount of time eating. Um. And when they eat,
they'll eat just about anything they can come across. But
when they eat, they eat the thing that they're eating whole,
especially if it's something soft like a berry. Right, they
just swallow a whole. It gets digested along the way
and they poop out whatever is left on the other side.
(14:33):
But they also eat things like seeds and nuts and
mass um. And they have a gizzard, which is like
a second stomach that hard stuff gets diverted to, and
it's this stomach is basically all muscle, and they also
eat while they're pecking around for food. They also eat
little pebbles and stones and bits of like hard things
(14:54):
like bone, and those things stay in their gizzard and
they become what are called gastro stones or gizzard stones,
and they end up basically like a rock tumbler that
crushes up things like seeds and mass that can then
be diverted over to the regular stomach for digestion, which
is pretty cool. Yeah. Another reason that I kind of
(15:14):
identify with turkeys is that they they do chill a lot.
They they get busy feeding and stuff and exploring around,
scraping around, pecking around at the ground. But after they
have eaten, they hang around for hours at a time.
They will preen. They will it's called dusting when they
just sort of move around in the loose soil. It's
(15:35):
a dirt bath. Yeah, and they kind of just rest
basically until a few hours before sunset and then they
start feeding again. And then this is this is amazing.
So right before nightfall though, they go back to those
trees at night to sleep. And if they get caught
sort of unaware, it's sort of like a vampire and
(15:57):
they look up and that sun's going down, they will
haul but back to their tree. Like they can run
tended twenty miles an hour and fly in short bursts
up to fifty five to get back to those trees.
Because one sundown comes if they're not in their little
homestead which offers a lot of protection there. Uh, they're
(16:19):
in big time. Danger for predators. Can you just see
a turkey like running back like gobble gobble gobble gobble
gobble gobble cobble babies. So um. What's what I find
interesting about them too, is is a lot of people
don't realize turkeys are extremely good at seeing and hearing.
(16:39):
We don't think that they're very good at smelling, but
their sight and their hearing are so amazing that it
really doesn't matter about the smell um. Apparently, they have
three times the acuity of the average humans eyesight um
and then in addition to that, they also see in color,
which is rare for a bird um. And they also
have between a two hundred and seventy and a three
(17:02):
hundred degree field of vision humans have about a hundred eighty.
And the reason why they can see so much around
them is because the turkey's eyes are on the side
of its head, which, on the one hand, gives them
a disadvantage. They don't have binocular vision like humans do,
so they have terrible depth perception, which is why you'll
see footage of a turkey looking at something and it'll
(17:22):
switch sides of its face that it's looking at you
because it's trying to discern depth that way, just kind
of quickly creating binocular vision like a flip book. But
what it lacks in binocular vision, it makes up for
with its incredible hearing because they're hearing is such they
can identify the location of a sound really, really well.
(17:45):
So they might not be able to see depth, but
they can hear depth in addition to all the amazing
stuff that they can see. You think we should take
a break. I just that's fine. I'm just gonna keep
talking through the break because I'm just so in love
with turkeys right now. All right, we'll be right. So,
(18:26):
you know, before the break you were talking about their
hearing um in Vernon, Florida. Which have you seen that yet? Still?
I know I have not gott I see it. Okay.
It's one of the one of the great um documentaries,
that is. But Mr Ship's really gives the like when
you listen to this man talk and I'm not a
hunter at all, but you really get a sense that
turkey hunting is one of the most challenging hunts that
(18:50):
you can undertake because of how smart, uh, how smart
they are and he he says, they're a smart boyd.
He's one of those guys always like that. Yeah yeah,
but um, how smart they are, and then that hearing
like you have to be so quiet and so all
of your movements have to be so deliberate, and even
(19:10):
the slightest like cracking of a stick, that turkey will
poke his head up and then just be gone out
of there. So um, although I'm not a hunter at
all and and don't would never shoot an animal, when
you listen to this guy, you can't help but be
sort of impressed with or maybe you just fall under
his spell. How much he loved it, I don't know.
(19:30):
So um yeah, so turkeys are really good at hearing,
they're really good at seeing, and they're easily spooked, which
all combined makes them very difficult to hunt. Yes, yeah
so uh as far as um, they're flocking and and
their behaviors. They live in separate flocks, the hens and
the toms do. And then once the spring comes around
(19:53):
and the days get longer, and then the warmer temperatures
sort of start coming in, then the males are to
leave their winter flocks and they're gonna start you know,
now it's it's time to party basically with the hens,
and they're gonna start, Like many animals, there are a
lot of rituals of trying to get their attention. They're gobbling.
They have a peak, a couple of peaks in gobbling,
(20:16):
and the first one is at the very beginning of
the breeding season, when there are a lot of hens
around and you're, you know, you're trying to make yourself
known as a worthy mail. Then you're gonna have a
second flock. After are most of the mating has taken place,
there are a lot less gobbling going on. And but
those males who didn't mate, or maybe they did, and
(20:38):
they're they're really trying to have another party. Basically that's
when their second peak is going to happen, right, But
in between those two peaks, there's less gobbling because by
that time the hens are like, all right, I'm into this,
so the males don't have to try as hard. And
apparently that second peak in gobbling is kind of the
more desperate. It's like a um, you know, at one
(20:59):
fifty am at the bar, Oh totally, it's like does
anyone anyone still want a party? Basically anybody around, but
you got to do it like the Night of the
Roxbury guys. But they're saying instead of him him, him,
I think it's Tom ken and will mate with multiple hens,
(21:19):
and hens actually may breed with the same mail more
than once. I don't think anyone has made any argument
that they're in love, but you never know. Let's say,
at the very least they have chemistry. They're also polygamous.
If you're in eastern wild Turkey, they think that they
sort of have a harem basically where you have a
bunch of different hens with one Tom until they've made it. Uh.
(21:44):
If you are out west, you might see what's called
a lek like system l e K, which is um,
it's basically ah, I mean it's sort of group mating
in group uh, group gobbling, like a bunch of Tom's
will get together and sort of cobble together a lot
(22:04):
of times. A group of siblings, like you know that,
you know those Carter boys, they get together and put
on quite a show for the ladies, that kind of thing.
And that actually makes sense. Um, the harem makes sense
because there's just such an abundance of turkeys that one
one Jake, you know, one Tom can mate with multiple
hands all at once, and you know the species continues.
(22:26):
But where it's more spread out for them to all
kind of come to one place. It makes sense because
it's much more convenient. Um. But also because all these
different displays of like manliness of tomliness, I guess um
really gets the hens in the mood. So it kind
of gets them prepared for mating much more quickly and
efficiently too, which is a real advantage of the of
(22:49):
the lex system. Yeah, and you actually did not misspeak
because Jake's can mate. Um, they're just way less successful
because they're Jake's. I met. Maybe there's some hens that
sit around and say, like, you know, I'm really more
into Jake's than Tom's because it was like Nancy, well,
(23:11):
I never um, but they do. Jake's actually can mate,
but you know, because it's because they are. They attract
females by those big shows and the best gobbles. They're
just usually not quite there yet. Yeah, and we'll talk
a little bit about I love if we always set
up like all the stuff we're gonna talk about in
every episode and then we actually talk about like maybe
seventy of it. But um, there's actually there's hierarchies and
(23:36):
turkey flocks which we'll talk about. But um, when like
the Carter brothers show up, or there's young Jake's and
older ones um. Depending on the dominance of the turkey,
that turkey is much more likely to actually mate. But
all the turkeys will be strutting their stuff, getting the
hens in the mood. It's really kind of this communal thing,
and that's that actually makes sense because turkeys, it turns out,
(23:58):
are super super social animals um. Which makes the fact
that the hens once they have made it uh and
go off to lay the eggs um, they do that themselves.
It's basically the one thing they do as individuals UM.
But they do like basically two a hand. They will
go off, they will find a nice grassy area at
the entrance of a nice um wood um, and they
(24:21):
will start laying eggs, and they'll lay one egg and
cover it up and then leave, and the next day,
usually about the same time, weirdly, they come back and
lay another egg, covered up, and then as they start
laying more and more eggs, they kind of reach like
this critical threshold to where they're like, Okay, I'm I'm
emotionally invested in these eggs. Now, I'm just gonna stay
around here and guard them. And then eventually incubate them,
(24:43):
and they do, and then about twenty four hours before
the eggs start to hatch chuck. They actually start making
um sounds, basically saying I'm I'm about to come out now. Yeah,
it's really cute. Uh, this little pipping sounds and this
pecking with and this is one of the cutest words
I've ever seen. The first little hole uh that these
(25:05):
things make from within the egg to get out is
made with an egg tooth. How cute is that? It
is very cute, But I mean the fact, can you
imagine seeing a little turkey egg pipping it's it's probably amazing.
And I know the hen is entrance because the hen
starts to make a little encouraging clucks like come along,
little fellows, let's get on out, Let's get on out.
(25:28):
And it could take about a day for all these
um polts to hatch, and they are very mobile from
the time they're hatched, but they are also very closely
bonded to mama hen and the siblings for a little while, um,
a pretty short while. For a couple of days, they
all sit around together. They um, they imprint on one
(25:48):
another and they one of the big things that they
do is they learn what mama sounds like. We'll get
to the calls later, but there's something card called an
alarm call, which is exactly what you think it is.
It's very very important way to say, hey, everybody, get
out of here. There's a you know, there's a raccoon
or a or a bobcat in the woods or something.
(26:09):
And they have to learn their own mother's alarm call.
And that's what they're doing in large part for those
first couple of days. Yeah, and within the first couple
of days and actually, um, a couple of weeks, they
can't fly, so they're real vulnerable because remember the mom
nests in in like grassland, not in the trees. Um.
So until they can fly, they can't roost in trees.
(26:32):
So they're they're big defense is to just scatter and
stay still. Yeah, and like as in frozen still for
up to a half an hour. If they hear that
alarm call. These little baby turkeys will just freeze like mannequins.
It's amazing, it is amazing. Um. One of the things
when a mother hen gives birth to a brood of poults,
(26:56):
they're usually there's a one to one ratio between males
and females, between jakes and baby hens, which I found
pretty amazing unless chuck something else happens. Yeah, this is
you know. I feel like usually when we cover animals
there's always one really astounding adaptation that we cover a
(27:17):
lot of times more than one. But in the case
of turkeys, they these hens. If they don't find a
mate and don't mate, they can still have little babies
through parthenogenesis. They can produce viable eggs. It doesn't happen
a lot, it seems like, and the embryos um I
(27:37):
think very few of them survive, but it is it
is medically impossible for a hen to to produce a
little baby eggs and have one. And if they do
have one and it actually lives, it is going to
be a male hatchling always, which is counterintuitive to me.
I think if it's an eleven uh, if it's an
(27:59):
evolution anary adaptation, would seem like they would be female. Yeah,
I don't know, but it's like bees, like, aren't aren't
n unfertilized be eggs don't they turn into male drones
And it's just the fertilized ones that become female workers.
I don't remember. I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly.
(28:19):
So it's weird that it would it would happen like that,
But yeah, that's a pretty rare occurrence, that parton a genesis,
you know. Yeah, So, um, now you've got all the
all the little pols have hatched, and they've they've been
running around eating bugs in the grass, and it's been
about seventeen days and now they can fly. So they're
starting to roost in the tree. And at first, adorably,
(28:42):
they're still scared little babies, so they roost under their
mother's wing at night. But as they get a little
more confident, they'll start to spread out into some of
the surrounding branches of the tree and the roost um.
And what you've got now is a new flock of turkeys.
But like I was saying, turkeys are extremely social creachers,
so those flocks typically tend to join other flocks, especially
(29:04):
mother hens with new poults, they'll live with other flocks
of um mother hens with their own pulse, and they'll
become these kind of like huge mega flocks where you know,
if you walk through at night, it seemed like every
branch of every tree around you was filled with turkeys,
and that would happen probably sometime in the spring, like
the early mid spring, after the eggs have hatched and
(29:27):
the babies are all now roosting in the trees with
their moms. Yeah, and here's another one that really tugged
on my heart strings a lot of times. Once they
have joined these other flocks, if you are the only
if you don't have any siblings, if you're the only
survivor of your hatch, um, you will oftentimes take up
with another mother hen and they will sort of adopt
(29:50):
you into their little family so you can have siblings.
And if that doesn't knock your socks off, they also
adopt the original mom to come along. Yeah, me too. Basically,
they are just like, come and join our family. You
only had one little baby that lived, and they need
some siblings, So why don't you and your in your
(30:10):
little hatchling come along and your little polt and join us,
Come have Thanksgiving with us. That's they don't say that word. So, um,
you've got the T word is what they say. Yeah,
T day. Um. So there's there's that's one kind of flock.
There's also a lot of um Like the Jake's the
young males in the um. That flock will continue to
(30:33):
stay until I believe the fall and they'll leave and
they'll go for mother flocks with other jake's and sometimes
um older gobblers and UM especially with their siblings too.
They'll hang out with them UM and then it'll the
young hands and the mother hans will stay together and
form their own flocks. So there's different flocks. But turkeys
are so social that they've been found too. If you
(30:55):
take a bird a turkey from its flock and put
it somewhere else, it'll base really just stand in one
spot and make a scared sound until you take the
turkey and put it back with its flock. Like they
have been shown to be basically debilitated when they removed
from their flock. And I was watching this video UM
called turkey and dog best friends are inseparable. Those are
(31:20):
the best things on the internet. So this turkey and
this dog, like, seriously, we're housemates, friends, like really great friends.
And the woman who adopted the turkey, I think as
a poult um was like, well, you know, the turkey
needs to be on a farm with other turkeys, so
she took it to a farm to go live its
life as a turkey on a turkey farm. And it
did the same thing that I've just described. It just
(31:41):
stood in one spot in the barnyard and made this
horrible call for I think three days. She let it
go on and finally was like, fine, come back home.
Right when she got it back home with the dog,
the turkey stopped and was back home and has been
there ever since. It's definitely worth watching that video. That
will if you're like, I don't know, I still like
to eat turkeys, and once you watch that one, that's
(32:03):
that's gonna be it for you. Pal. You can't eat
turkeys or dogs anymore. No, I can't eat pigs either.
So another I guess we mentioned the alarm call. Turkeys
have an astounding ability to communicate with each other. They
have a lot of different vocalizations. Mr Henry Ship's talks
about a lot of those, the different kinds of gobbles
(32:24):
that a turkey hunter has to be acquainted with and
make yourself to uh to attract turkeys. But there he
calls them yeps. Of course, there are three kinds of yelps.
There's the tree yelp, the plane yelp, and the plane
lost call uh and then there are a couple of
basic calls, the clock and the alarm put and then
(32:45):
a few other just uh complex calls. There's the cackle
of the gobble and what's called the ki ki, But
that tree yelp is what they're gonna make that sort
of their morning routine. The first thing they do in
the morning is start tree yelping, and it's basically like, hey, everybody,
good morning, how did you sleep, Good morning? Good morning.
(33:06):
There's the plane yelp, which is like, um, like just
during the day, if you want to say, hey, everybody,
let's let's come huddle up over here. Because when they
eat as a flock, they might spread out over a
quarter acre, but we've seen that they will always have
at least one constantly looking out and they'll trade that
job off, but there's always at least one bird looking
(33:28):
out for the rest of the flock ready to make.
A call. Might be a plane plane yelp, it might
be an alarm putt, but whatever that that is, it's
going to get the bird's attention very quickly. Right then
you have that plane lost call. It's sort of like
the plane yelp, but it's usually louder. It's got some
more urgency to it, um, and that they think is
more for family. It's like, hey, you and all your
(33:52):
brothers and sisters, get over here. Toot sweet yeah. Um.
There's also what else? The cluck, which is to say, hey, hey, chuck, cluck, cluck, cluck, chuck,
you look up what and I say, I forgot. I
was gonna say, you go back to eating. I just
said specific to a person, meaning a turkey person, right,
(34:15):
a tom or a him. Um, there's that alarm put
put which is basically like, hey, everybody, there's something weird
going on. The kiki is if a little poult or
a younger turkey is a little worried and wants to
be reassured or what, doesn't know where everybody is. That's
probably a pretty cute one. I listened to some of
these and um, they're not they're not. It's not on
(34:38):
a monopeia Like the ki ki doesn't sound like a
key key to me. I don't know what they're talking about,
but it sounds like a wine almost. It's weird. And
then you have the cackle, which, um, that's sort of
like hello and goodbye when you're coming into your rooster.
You're leaving in your roost, you're gonna cackle and say
I'm here, all right. Gobble. Everybody knows the gobble. But
(35:02):
it turns out that's actually not that frequent a sound.
It's one of the least frequent sounds they make because
it's typically made by Tom's when they're strutting their stuff
for you know, mating to you know, get it on,
literally strutting their stuff right. Um. And then here is
one of the facts of this chock full of fact podcasts.
(35:25):
Turkeys per and when they purr, it's quite obvious they're
purring with contentment, exactly like a cat. Yeah, it's pretty neat.
I saw another video of a turkey being stroked and
petted and it just crawled up on the person's lap purring.
So the other thing when they're when they've laid these
eggs and everything they and incubating, they will turn them periodically,
(35:48):
which is really great. And they're what they're doing that
is they're letting these letting the exchange oxygen and CEO
two as well as they think. And this makes a
lot of sense, keeping the little embryo from attaching to
one side of the egg. So if it starts to attach.
They'll just turn it and then it'll flop down and
not attach itself. And then there's also re nesting right
(36:12):
there is, which is basically like if the if the
turkey is disturbed during the nesting process, she may go
off and create a new nest. I get the impression
of the other eggs are abandoned, um or Remember we
said that she is emotionally invested after a certain point.
If she's disturbed, then she just abandons the nest and
doesn't do anymore nesting that season, which is very sad. Yeah,
(36:35):
that's super sad. So you want to take a break,
let's do it. Okay, we'll be right back, everybody, So Chuck,
(37:09):
I think at the beginning I was saying that turkeys
are way more intelligent than we think, and that's true,
right They a smart boy, one of the smartest we
got in this country. That's a good, good vern In Florida.
He's passed on, by the way, one of the cool uh.
And if you're interested in that movie, go see it.
(37:31):
And there's also a movie Crush episode where one of
my really really good friends, Mike comes on and talks
about vern In Florida and he actually struck up a
friendship with Henry Ship's via telephone for the remainder of
his life. Oh that's neat. That's a long telephone call. Well,
they talked off and on quite a bit. It was
(37:52):
really special. Yeah, I guess that's cool man. That's so
he just called him out of the blue. Yeah, he
and Henry, he would call him up, Well, hey, Mike,
how are you doing. But and this was twenty something
years after run in Florida was from the I think
early nineties or maybe even late eighties, and so he
just you know, he got a kick out of it
that that Mike thought he was famous. That's cool. That's
(38:12):
cool man. So you never answered my Oh yeah, you
did kind of answer my question. Turkeys are rather smart.
There's a a longstanding myth that turkeys are so stupid
they'll actually drown when it's raining because they look up
at the rain and the rain falls down their gullet
and draw them. That that's true. I've heard that before.
(38:34):
H it's true that there's a myth. The myth itself
is totally totally wrong. Um, that's been observed. Something similar
has been observed mistakenly in domesticated birds, meaning like factory
farm turkeys, and um, they've actually shown that if that
has ever happened, it's not the turkey looking up to
see the rain, because the turkey wouldn't look up to
(38:55):
see something above. It would look from the side of
its head because it has mon pocular vision yea, so
it wouldn't be looking at the rain. And if it
is looking up and has ever drowned or something or
seemed to have drowned, it was because it was having
a certain kind of seizure that apparently domesticated factory farm
turkeys have as a general condition. They have seizures and
(39:16):
actually die from those kind of seizures fairly frequently. So
they think some farm worker saw turkey have a seizure
while I was looking up while it was raining and
died and that actually might have given birth to this
incredibly wrong myth. It turns out that was my cousin. Uh.
(39:38):
They are smart and they have great memories, which is
you know, in the animal kingdom, memory is is a
is an interesting thing and a lot of times a
pretty good indicator of intelligence and just something more going
on there. Uh. Whild turkeys have a great memory. They
can remember very precise locations. They can go back to
the same location miles away at the same exact time
(40:02):
of day to get food, so they have a really
good internal clock as well. And uh hands and Tom's.
They can also chuck supposedly differentiate human faces, so like
they can tell humans who are different based on their face,
which is pretty smart if you ask me. Oh, totally. Um,
they can be a nuisance if you like have a farm. Um,
(40:25):
they're they're droppings can carry disease at times, but they
you know, they're easily scared. Like you said, like there's
a list of things and how to get rid of turkeys,
um that we came up with. Uh, well it didn't invent,
but came up with from experts. They've been testing them
out all week and it seems like all of them
(40:47):
are like you know, turkeys get scared super easily. So
scare them off or if they're a real problem on
your property, put up a uh a motion activated scarecrow
or water sprinkler or something like that. Um, any kind
of loud noise, flailing your arms. I don't get rid
of turkeys. They just they they're scared of you. They
want to get out of there. They're not aggressive. They
can be intimidating if you're a kid because they're big.
(41:09):
But even a kid's gonna scare a turkey off. Yeah,
they they are easy to scare off, but they can
also be really intimidating and aggressive, especially if it's a
tom during mating season. Um. So you're supposed to do
the same thing to turkeys that you do to coyotes,
and it's called hazing, where you show them your dominant
and you can do it by everything from turning the
(41:30):
hose on them, um, throwing a tennis ball in their
general direction. Opening umbrella is a big one. But you're
basically saying like, I'm not scared of you, and in fact,
I'm going to scare you off. Because if you don't
do that, apparently, then they become increasingly more difficult to
get rid of because they think they're dominant to you
or say a family member. And if you combine that
(41:50):
with somebody, whether it's you or a neighbor or something,
feeding the turkeys or even letting them eat bird seed
out of your bird feeder, Um, that's a that that
that can be a problem, actually, especially if you don't
like turkeys running at you. Yeah, and the other really
cool fact about hazing as they say that, like everyone
in your family has to do it. If you want
to solve your turkey problem, Like you've got to get
(42:12):
if grandma lives there, she's got to get out there
and haze that turkey. If you've got a four year old,
you gotta send that four year old out there to
haze that turkey supervised, I would imagine. But like every
person in that house has to exert their dominance. Yeah,
exert it with extreme prejudice all over that turkey. Gross.
So um, I guess that's it. One thing I saw chuck.
(42:34):
For Thanksgiving today, eight percent of Americans will eat turkey,
which actually, which seems right, doesn't seem high or low.
But get this, that translates to seven million pounds of
turkey on average, or forty six million turkeys all killed
and eating on a single day today. Goodness me. And
then that's a lot of turkeys. It's a lot of turkeys.
(42:57):
Uh so, uh, if you want to know more about turkey,
he's go watch some turkey and dog friendship videos and
uh that might make you regret what you just had
to eat. And since I said that, it's time for
listener mail. Uh yeah, and before listener mail, I just
want to close the window on the Vernon, Florida thing
(43:17):
if you uh don't know what I'm talking about. It
was a documentary originally, and this fairly interesting. Errol Morris
went down to this sleepy town, like I said, Inland
in the Florida Panhandle to do a documentary on these
people that live there who would cut off their limbs
for insurance money. And that was they were. It was
(43:37):
called stub Town was the nickname he went down there.
No one would talk about it. Uh, And so he
found himself down there without a documentary subject all of
a sudden, and so he just, after talking to these people,
said well, this town is a documentary in and of itself.
And he just turned the camera on the citizens and
there's probably like ten or twelve of them. It's sort
(44:00):
of interviewed through the whole thing that that's cut together,
and that's all it is is these people that live
in Vernon, Florida. Pretty cool. Yeah, I need to see
it one day. Yeah it is. It is a cult
classic and a true documentary legend. It's really great. Uh So,
listener mail, this comes from Erica. Hey, Josh, Chuck and
Jerry listen to the podcast episode on fruit flies. I
(44:21):
want to say that Chuck's pronunciation of the word drosophila
is correct. That's rare. Having worked in a basic research
laboratory for years, I've often pined for a science dictionary
to help with pronouncing scientific terminology and nomenclature. For example,
unless you chat with researchers on a regular basis, how
would you know to pronounce the gene b R c
(44:41):
A one as bracca one and c d o as kiddo,
while p D one is just p D one. I
don't know how you would know. You wouldn't You need
to make smart friends, I think is what it comes
down to. That's right, And she says, as long as
we're discussing pronunciations, you mentioned in your episode on the
US interstate system that Californians add the word the for
(45:04):
any freeway highway number. I've lived in the Bay Area
my whole life. I hesitate to generalize for all of
northern California, but at least in the Bay Area. Most
people say things like the rest of the country one
on one highway one on one instead of the one
on one anyone who says the one on one is
most likely from southern California. Got it? That makes sense? Yeah,
so I guess that is sort of that makes sense.
(45:25):
It's an l A thing, right, Yeah, That's what I
always associated with for sure. So that is Erica. Well
thanks a lot, Erica. That um email is just chock
full of info and we appreciate it big time. Thank you.
If you want to be like Erica and send us
an email chock full of info, we love them, you
can send it off to us at stuff podcast at
(45:47):
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you should know is a
production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts
for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts or where ever you listen to your pay
at ships
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios, How Stuff Works, Gobble Gobble, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and there's Jerry Jero Roland. Couldn't come up with anything
in the last second, that's all right, and this is
(00:22):
Stuff you Should Know about turkeys. Yeah, so I need
to just apologize at the beginning of this episode because
I could not help and I know I will not
be able to help myself from making Vernon Florida references
the Great Great documentary from Errol Morris, one of the
prominent about the citizens of Vernon, Florida in the nineteen
(00:44):
eighties and Inland, Florida, panhandled small town and one of
the lead characters and in that documentary was Mr Henry Ships.
He was a turkey hunter and all he does is
talk about turkey hunting. And I know it by heart,
me and all my friends know it by heart, and
we quoted a lot. So it's really really hard not
(01:06):
to just talk like Henry Ships. So I'll try not
to because it's so random that the people it won't
be worth it for like the hundred people that will
think that's the best thing ever. I don't know, man,
I've found over the years that it's good to cater
those people sometimes too. You know, I might throw in
an occasionally and I'll explain what I'm talking about maybe,
(01:27):
But um, we do need to thank the Humane Society
for what The bulk of this research came from this
really great, great, great article that someone nameless person that
the Humane Society put together from a list of great,
great sources. So I was surprised to see something so thorough.
It was really great. It was written by the mysterious
Tom t It was really in favor of turkeys suspiciously.
(01:54):
And now I'm Thanksgiving day two, So we also need
to apologize for We're not trying to guilt you or
anything like that. Maybe to listen to this one for
a week, I will say the chuck like, I'm not
eating turkey anymore after this. And it's really kind of
a pain because turkey is my favorite. My favorite meat
of all time is turkey. I know, I'm sorry. Then, Uh,
it is tough. I knew turkeys were pretty cool and
(02:16):
pretty smart, um, but it's it is. It is tough
to read this stuff and still slice into that bird. Well,
it's funny to hear that they are smart, because they
have such a great reputation for being just totally stupid.
But it turns out that that's really not right at all.
It's at at best a human misinterpretation, maybe at worst
cynical um justification for eating them. Um. But one of
(02:40):
the first things that will remark about turkeys right out
of the gate, that a lot of people don't know
is that Ben Franklin was more in favor of turkeys
as America's national emblem as far as birds go, than
he was the bald eagle. He had a big problem
with the fact that um eagles don't necessarily hunt as
much as bully other birds for whatever they just hunted. Um.
(03:04):
He said that the eagle does not get his living honestly,
he steals from the fishawk and it's too lazy to
fish for himself. The turkey, however, is much more respectable
a true original native, and a turkey would not hesitate
to attack a grenadier of the British Guard who should
presume to invade his farmyard. And after researching turkeys, um,
(03:25):
I daresay he was probably right about that. Yeah, and
the other thing that I'm surprised he didn't mention was
and also by the way, male turkeys during the breeding season,
literally their head and neck turns red white and blue. Yes,
I noticed that too, Like that is so obvious, such
an obvious pick. Like at one point during the year,
(03:45):
you've got a red white and blue bird. Yeah, exactly,
let's see a bald eagle do so. The other thing,
the other reason why um, And I think a lot
of people think that Franklin said that that that that
needed to be like the Great Seal of the United States,
and that's not the case. He instead, i think, proposed
(04:06):
Moses is the Great Seal um, which is odd. But
another check in Ben Franklin's pro turkey stance is that
turkeys are indigenous to North America and there's actually we're
down to two species. UM. One the common turkey, which
is the kind that you or I or anybody else
living uh north of Mexico are familiar with. UM. They're
(04:31):
all over the place. They're all over the United States
and Canada. UM. But the weird thing is there's also
turkeys in Central and South America, and it turns out
that there are really hardy, adaptable species, and again way
smarter than than you probably give them credit for. Yeah,
I mean turkeys they do like warm weather, but there
(04:51):
they can survive in a lot. Like you said, I
remember very distinctly when I lived in New Jersey one uh,
snowy morning looking into my backyard and there were it
was like a painting or something. There were three deer
in six wild turkey just walking together through the snow
in the backyard. And Um, I didn't know that they
(05:12):
would venture that far north, but they're all over the place.
Um they are. Uh did you say the name of
the ones in Mexico? The oscillated turkeys in the Yucatan
Peninsula and Guatemala and Belize. They are different looking than
the turkeys we know. They're smaller, a little shorter, they
(05:32):
have sort of a copper bronze copper bronze green plumage.
And I think the male turkeys have larger spurs and
do not have beards. And will explain what all that
is in a minute. Yeah, So if you're talking, if
you're talking turkey, specifically male turkey, another term former gobblers
(05:53):
or tom's for young young males, they're called Jake's. Love
that and then adult females are hens, and then hatchlings
babies of both sexes um are called poults p o
u l ts. Yeah, the adult female is going to
be about eight to eleven pounds, adult males about seventeen
to twenty one. Um. We mentioned you know, if you
(06:16):
look at a turkey, they've got all kinds of crazy
stuff going on on their head. They look they look like,
you know, something from a zombie movie. And and every
single adult turkey has what's called carnicles, a snood sounds
like Dr Seuss, and a do and a dow lap.
The carnicles are those those big fleshy things at the
(06:37):
bottom of the neck. The snood is the stuff that
protrudes from the top of the head and sort of
flaps over across the bill. And then that do lap
is that little thin skin under the throat that's so
uh tuggable. Yeah. And if it's just one thing of
skin that goes vertically down the neck in the front,
(06:58):
it's a do lap. If it has more than one, um,
it's called the wattle. But these these things, the coronicles,
the snood, and the dow lap are the things that
make turkeys outrageously ugly to humans. But ironically those are
the things that attract other turkeys. They like you said,
(07:18):
change color. They're unique to each turkey. Um, and they
are are like apparently if you're a female turkey, you're
looking for a guy with a longer snood. That's an
attractive thing to you. So I just find that really
great that like we're like that. It's just those things
are just so ugly. They could stop clock and to
(07:39):
the turkey, it's like, man, nice snood, buddy, you're looking good. Yeah.
And I think chronicle, snood and dow lap would be
like a great name for a comedy bluegrass trio that
would be on he Hall or something. Oh my. Uh
So the beard that I mentioned to Uma with Burning
(08:00):
Florida reference no no um. For most turkey strains, the
males are the only ones who have a beard, and
that is this. It's a feather. It's a modified feather
sort of in the upper chest that keeps growing. It's
like a you know, if you have a one of
those rat tails actually want to grow out for life.
(08:23):
A lot of heat Hall references. I guess they grow
about three to five inches a year. And if Vernon
Florida is to be um is for in Florida, is correct?
Then Mr Ships would point out that the longer the beard,
the more sort of prize trophy it is. If you're
a turkey hunter, like that'd be akin to a large
rack of antlers because they mount the beard on a
(08:45):
little plaque. Um right. Uh. The other thing about male
turkeys that you can differentiate from a female, Um, Well,
females have feathers that go up the back of their head,
so it looks like they have a little mullet going on.
Males do not. They have a bear head. And then
males also have spurs like um do claws almost coming
(09:07):
off of their legs and uh, hands typically don't right,
And like I said, those males during breeding season they turn.
The carnicles go red, the white is the crown of
the head, and then the neck on the side of
the face go blue. And there's just nothing more American
than that. It's true. But that's just the gobblers, right.
(09:30):
The hands don't turn. Yeah, so um, like you said,
and I think I said first, you can find turkeys
all over the place and all sorts of different conditions. Um,
whether it's hot out, whether it's covered in snow, whether
there's deer around, who cares. Turkeys are down for hanging out. Um.
They just need, or I should say, prefer, certain kinds
(09:54):
of habitats um huge trees in a mature forest, and
typically they want mass bearing trees and mast. I don't
remember what we were talking about recently. Oh, I think
it was squirrels hiding nuts. Mast is like one of
my favorite words of all time. It's just so earthy
and natural. I just love it. Um. But it means
like acorns and um, like tree nuts that that you
(10:17):
can find in North America. And that's one of the
things that turkeys e. So they need lots of trees
that have lots of masts. And the other thing is
that trees are roosting sites turkeys. Although they're not typically
thought of as able to fly, they can't fly for
short distances and they roost in trees at night, which
I don't think I've ever seen a turkey in a tree.
(10:38):
I haven't either. Um, you know, I see turkeys quite
a bit on the side of the road or taking
hikes and stuff like that. But I guess it's because
at night. I'm not hiking at night that I have
never seen a turkey in a tree. Well, sure, yeah,
because they're diurnal, right, Well, yeah, I'm just saying that
that must be the reason. Like I always see turkey
sort of just pecking around on the trail. I think
(10:59):
that's the I was laughing because you said you made
it sound like the turkeys were hiking going on. Well,
they're technically, I guess I can see in with like
big chunky socks on and vast boots. Just being all serious,
but you mentioned their range. Their home range is what
it's called, and their home range is dictated by how
much food is around, how much of that mast is around,
(11:20):
and if they you know, they have pretty big ranges anyway,
but if there's a lot of food around, then they
may maintain like four hundred to a thousand acres, which
is huge, and that's if it's abundant. If they don't
have a lot of food around, they have been known
to maintain ranges of eight thousand acres or more and
travel up to fifty miles to different home ranges if
(11:43):
they can't, like they don't, uh, technically they don't migrate.
But the birds maintaining eight thousand acres and traveling fifty
miles they're they're migrating around kind of. Yeah, but I
mean that must be a really poor habitat because turkeys
are not picky eaters. Um. In addition to mast, they'll
eat everything from seeds to lizards and basically anything they
(12:04):
find that chock full of protein. They typically like things
like seeds, plants, fruit berries, that kind of stuff. But
they'll eat live animals um. Lead snake, Yeah, they lead
a snake. They'll lead into crazy yep. And and and then
particular when a turkey is born, the young turkey, the
poult for the first week or two of their life,
(12:24):
they're eating nothing but insects constantly. Yeah, And you know
that's why they prefer a range. Uh. They like that forest,
but they like the forest on the edge of some
grassy areas because that moves them. They get some closer
to those little insects that you're going to find for
those pols, right exactly. And that's actually where pols are
born and raised is in the grassy area at the
(12:45):
edge of a forest, which is pretty cool and just
quaint is all get out. It's so it's like cottage
core for animals, you know. Yeah. Uh, if you think
you that they may need to live near a lake
or something to get their water, or a river or
stream or any kind of wetland. You're wrong. Um, I'm
sure they love that kind of scenery, but they don't
need it for water. They can get water their water
(13:08):
intake from vegetation. They can get it from that morning
do um, succulent insects, little small pools. Um. They can
kind of forage through all that stuff to get enough water. Yeah.
I mean, like when there's like a lot of snow
on the ground, they don't hiberdate or anything, but they
go into like this kind of like uh, just hanging
around the tree for chill mode time. Yeah, chill mode
(13:29):
for sure. And the water intake is just a little
bit of snow that they're eating off of the tree,
and the food is maybe just a butt or two
that they can find on the tree they're sitting on. Yeah,
and you know they do well. Turkeys are thriving, They
eat a lot. They One thing you will not see
very much unless they're sick is a skinny turkey under nurse.
(13:51):
Turkeys are pretty rare, like I said, unless there's some
sort of disease or maybe if it's like in the
middle of a really really long winter, they might the
thin up a little bit. But turkeys eat a lot
and they're they're generally pretty healthy and plump, right. Um.
So like we said, they're diurnal, right, they they are
active during the day just like us humans. Uh. And
(14:13):
you said they eat a lot, So they spend a
significant amount of time eating. Um. And when they eat,
they'll eat just about anything they can come across. But
when they eat, they eat the thing that they're eating whole,
especially if it's something soft like a berry. Right, they
just swallow a whole. It gets digested along the way
and they poop out whatever is left on the other side.
(14:33):
But they also eat things like seeds and nuts and
mass um. And they have a gizzard, which is like
a second stomach that hard stuff gets diverted to, and
it's this stomach is basically all muscle, and they also
eat while they're pecking around for food. They also eat
little pebbles and stones and bits of like hard things
(14:54):
like bone, and those things stay in their gizzard and
they become what are called gastro stones or gizzard stones,
and they end up basically like a rock tumbler that
crushes up things like seeds and mass that can then
be diverted over to the regular stomach for digestion, which
is pretty cool. Yeah. Another reason that I kind of
(15:14):
identify with turkeys is that they they do chill a lot.
They they get busy feeding and stuff and exploring around,
scraping around, pecking around at the ground. But after they
have eaten, they hang around for hours at a time.
They will preen. They will it's called dusting when they
just sort of move around in the loose soil. It's
(15:35):
a dirt bath. Yeah, and they kind of just rest
basically until a few hours before sunset and then they
start feeding again. And then this is this is amazing.
So right before nightfall though, they go back to those
trees at night to sleep. And if they get caught
sort of unaware, it's sort of like a vampire and
(15:57):
they look up and that sun's going down, they will
haul but back to their tree. Like they can run
tended twenty miles an hour and fly in short bursts
up to fifty five to get back to those trees.
Because one sundown comes if they're not in their little
homestead which offers a lot of protection there. Uh, they're
(16:19):
in big time. Danger for predators. Can you just see
a turkey like running back like gobble gobble gobble gobble
gobble gobble cobble babies. So um. What's what I find
interesting about them too, is is a lot of people
don't realize turkeys are extremely good at seeing and hearing.
(16:39):
We don't think that they're very good at smelling, but
their sight and their hearing are so amazing that it
really doesn't matter about the smell um. Apparently, they have
three times the acuity of the average humans eyesight um
and then in addition to that, they also see in color,
which is rare for a bird um. And they also
have between a two hundred and seventy and a three
(17:02):
hundred degree field of vision humans have about a hundred eighty.
And the reason why they can see so much around
them is because the turkey's eyes are on the side
of its head, which, on the one hand, gives them
a disadvantage. They don't have binocular vision like humans do,
so they have terrible depth perception, which is why you'll
see footage of a turkey looking at something and it'll
(17:22):
switch sides of its face that it's looking at you
because it's trying to discern depth that way, just kind
of quickly creating binocular vision like a flip book. But
what it lacks in binocular vision, it makes up for
with its incredible hearing because they're hearing is such they
can identify the location of a sound really, really well.
(17:45):
So they might not be able to see depth, but
they can hear depth in addition to all the amazing
stuff that they can see. You think we should take
a break. I just that's fine. I'm just gonna keep
talking through the break because I'm just so in love
with turkeys right now. All right, we'll be right. So,
(18:26):
you know, before the break you were talking about their
hearing um in Vernon, Florida. Which have you seen that yet? Still?
I know I have not gott I see it. Okay.
It's one of the one of the great um documentaries,
that is. But Mr Ship's really gives the like when
you listen to this man talk and I'm not a
hunter at all, but you really get a sense that
turkey hunting is one of the most challenging hunts that
(18:50):
you can undertake because of how smart, uh, how smart
they are and he he says, they're a smart boyd.
He's one of those guys always like that. Yeah yeah,
but um, how smart they are, and then that hearing
like you have to be so quiet and so all
of your movements have to be so deliberate, and even
(19:10):
the slightest like cracking of a stick, that turkey will
poke his head up and then just be gone out
of there. So um, although I'm not a hunter at
all and and don't would never shoot an animal, when
you listen to this guy, you can't help but be
sort of impressed with or maybe you just fall under
his spell. How much he loved it, I don't know.
(19:30):
So um yeah, so turkeys are really good at hearing,
they're really good at seeing, and they're easily spooked, which
all combined makes them very difficult to hunt. Yes, yeah
so uh as far as um, they're flocking and and
their behaviors. They live in separate flocks, the hens and
the toms do. And then once the spring comes around
(19:53):
and the days get longer, and then the warmer temperatures
sort of start coming in, then the males are to
leave their winter flocks and they're gonna start you know,
now it's it's time to party basically with the hens,
and they're gonna start, Like many animals, there are a
lot of rituals of trying to get their attention. They're gobbling.
They have a peak, a couple of peaks in gobbling,
(20:16):
and the first one is at the very beginning of
the breeding season, when there are a lot of hens
around and you're, you know, you're trying to make yourself
known as a worthy mail. Then you're gonna have a
second flock. After are most of the mating has taken place,
there are a lot less gobbling going on. And but
those males who didn't mate, or maybe they did, and
(20:38):
they're they're really trying to have another party. Basically that's
when their second peak is going to happen, right, But
in between those two peaks, there's less gobbling because by
that time the hens are like, all right, I'm into this,
so the males don't have to try as hard. And
apparently that second peak in gobbling is kind of the
more desperate. It's like a um, you know, at one
(20:59):
fifty am at the bar, Oh totally, it's like does
anyone anyone still want a party? Basically anybody around, but
you got to do it like the Night of the
Roxbury guys. But they're saying instead of him him, him,
I think it's Tom ken and will mate with multiple hens,
(21:19):
and hens actually may breed with the same mail more
than once. I don't think anyone has made any argument
that they're in love, but you never know. Let's say,
at the very least they have chemistry. They're also polygamous.
If you're in eastern wild Turkey, they think that they
sort of have a harem basically where you have a
bunch of different hens with one Tom until they've made it. Uh.
(21:44):
If you are out west, you might see what's called
a lek like system l e K, which is um,
it's basically ah, I mean it's sort of group mating
in group uh, group gobbling, like a bunch of Tom's
will get together and sort of cobble together a lot
(22:04):
of times. A group of siblings, like you know that,
you know those Carter boys, they get together and put
on quite a show for the ladies, that kind of thing.
And that actually makes sense. Um, the harem makes sense
because there's just such an abundance of turkeys that one
one Jake, you know, one Tom can mate with multiple
hands all at once, and you know the species continues.
(22:26):
But where it's more spread out for them to all
kind of come to one place. It makes sense because
it's much more convenient. Um. But also because all these
different displays of like manliness of tomliness, I guess um
really gets the hens in the mood. So it kind
of gets them prepared for mating much more quickly and
efficiently too, which is a real advantage of the of
(22:49):
the lex system. Yeah, and you actually did not misspeak
because Jake's can mate. Um, they're just way less successful
because they're Jake's. I met. Maybe there's some hens that
sit around and say, like, you know, I'm really more
into Jake's than Tom's because it was like Nancy, well,
(23:11):
I never um, but they do. Jake's actually can mate,
but you know, because it's because they are. They attract
females by those big shows and the best gobbles. They're
just usually not quite there yet. Yeah, and we'll talk
a little bit about I love if we always set
up like all the stuff we're gonna talk about in
every episode and then we actually talk about like maybe
seventy of it. But um, there's actually there's hierarchies and
(23:36):
turkey flocks which we'll talk about. But um, when like
the Carter brothers show up, or there's young Jake's and
older ones um. Depending on the dominance of the turkey,
that turkey is much more likely to actually mate. But
all the turkeys will be strutting their stuff, getting the
hens in the mood. It's really kind of this communal thing,
and that's that actually makes sense because turkeys, it turns out,
(23:58):
are super super social animals um. Which makes the fact
that the hens once they have made it uh and
go off to lay the eggs um, they do that themselves.
It's basically the one thing they do as individuals UM.
But they do like basically two a hand. They will
go off, they will find a nice grassy area at
the entrance of a nice um wood um, and they
(24:21):
will start laying eggs, and they'll lay one egg and
cover it up and then leave, and the next day,
usually about the same time, weirdly, they come back and
lay another egg, covered up, and then as they start
laying more and more eggs, they kind of reach like
this critical threshold to where they're like, Okay, I'm I'm
emotionally invested in these eggs. Now, I'm just gonna stay
around here and guard them. And then eventually incubate them,
(24:43):
and they do, and then about twenty four hours before
the eggs start to hatch chuck. They actually start making
um sounds, basically saying I'm I'm about to come out now. Yeah,
it's really cute. Uh, this little pipping sounds and this
pecking with and this is one of the cutest words
I've ever seen. The first little hole uh that these
(25:05):
things make from within the egg to get out is
made with an egg tooth. How cute is that? It
is very cute, But I mean the fact, can you
imagine seeing a little turkey egg pipping it's it's probably amazing.
And I know the hen is entrance because the hen
starts to make a little encouraging clucks like come along,
little fellows, let's get on out, Let's get on out.
(25:28):
And it could take about a day for all these
um polts to hatch, and they are very mobile from
the time they're hatched, but they are also very closely
bonded to mama hen and the siblings for a little while, um,
a pretty short while. For a couple of days, they
all sit around together. They um, they imprint on one
(25:48):
another and they one of the big things that they
do is they learn what mama sounds like. We'll get
to the calls later, but there's something card called an
alarm call, which is exactly what you think it is.
It's very very important way to say, hey, everybody, get
out of here. There's a you know, there's a raccoon
or a or a bobcat in the woods or something.
(26:09):
And they have to learn their own mother's alarm call.
And that's what they're doing in large part for those
first couple of days. Yeah, and within the first couple
of days and actually, um, a couple of weeks, they
can't fly, so they're real vulnerable because remember the mom
nests in in like grassland, not in the trees. Um.
So until they can fly, they can't roost in trees.
(26:32):
So they're they're big defense is to just scatter and
stay still. Yeah, and like as in frozen still for
up to a half an hour. If they hear that
alarm call. These little baby turkeys will just freeze like mannequins.
It's amazing, it is amazing. Um. One of the things
when a mother hen gives birth to a brood of poults,
(26:56):
they're usually there's a one to one ratio between males
and females, between jakes and baby hens, which I found
pretty amazing unless chuck something else happens. Yeah, this is
you know. I feel like usually when we cover animals
there's always one really astounding adaptation that we cover a
(27:17):
lot of times more than one. But in the case
of turkeys, they these hens. If they don't find a
mate and don't mate, they can still have little babies
through parthenogenesis. They can produce viable eggs. It doesn't happen
a lot, it seems like, and the embryos um I
(27:37):
think very few of them survive, but it is it
is medically impossible for a hen to to produce a
little baby eggs and have one. And if they do
have one and it actually lives, it is going to
be a male hatchling always, which is counterintuitive to me.
I think if it's an eleven uh, if it's an
(27:59):
evolution anary adaptation, would seem like they would be female. Yeah,
I don't know, but it's like bees, like, aren't aren't
n unfertilized be eggs don't they turn into male drones
And it's just the fertilized ones that become female workers.
I don't remember. I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly.
(28:19):
So it's weird that it would it would happen like that,
But yeah, that's a pretty rare occurrence, that parton a genesis,
you know. Yeah, So, um, now you've got all the
all the little pols have hatched, and they've they've been
running around eating bugs in the grass, and it's been
about seventeen days and now they can fly. So they're
starting to roost in the tree. And at first, adorably,
(28:42):
they're still scared little babies, so they roost under their
mother's wing at night. But as they get a little
more confident, they'll start to spread out into some of
the surrounding branches of the tree and the roost um.
And what you've got now is a new flock of turkeys.
But like I was saying, turkeys are extremely social creachers,
so those flocks typically tend to join other flocks, especially
(29:04):
mother hens with new poults, they'll live with other flocks
of um mother hens with their own pulse, and they'll
become these kind of like huge mega flocks where you know,
if you walk through at night, it seemed like every
branch of every tree around you was filled with turkeys,
and that would happen probably sometime in the spring, like
the early mid spring, after the eggs have hatched and
(29:27):
the babies are all now roosting in the trees with
their moms. Yeah, and here's another one that really tugged
on my heart strings a lot of times. Once they
have joined these other flocks, if you are the only
if you don't have any siblings, if you're the only
survivor of your hatch, um, you will oftentimes take up
with another mother hen and they will sort of adopt
(29:50):
you into their little family so you can have siblings.
And if that doesn't knock your socks off, they also
adopt the original mom to come along. Yeah, me too. Basically,
they are just like, come and join our family. You
only had one little baby that lived, and they need
some siblings, So why don't you and your in your
(30:10):
little hatchling come along and your little polt and join us,
Come have Thanksgiving with us. That's they don't say that word. So, um,
you've got the T word is what they say. Yeah,
T day. Um. So there's there's that's one kind of flock.
There's also a lot of um Like the Jake's the
young males in the um. That flock will continue to
(30:33):
stay until I believe the fall and they'll leave and
they'll go for mother flocks with other jake's and sometimes
um older gobblers and UM especially with their siblings too.
They'll hang out with them UM and then it'll the
young hands and the mother hans will stay together and
form their own flocks. So there's different flocks. But turkeys
are so social that they've been found too. If you
(30:55):
take a bird a turkey from its flock and put
it somewhere else, it'll base really just stand in one
spot and make a scared sound until you take the
turkey and put it back with its flock. Like they
have been shown to be basically debilitated when they removed
from their flock. And I was watching this video UM
called turkey and dog best friends are inseparable. Those are
(31:20):
the best things on the internet. So this turkey and
this dog, like, seriously, we're housemates, friends, like really great friends.
And the woman who adopted the turkey, I think as
a poult um was like, well, you know, the turkey
needs to be on a farm with other turkeys, so
she took it to a farm to go live its
life as a turkey on a turkey farm. And it
did the same thing that I've just described. It just
(31:41):
stood in one spot in the barnyard and made this
horrible call for I think three days. She let it
go on and finally was like, fine, come back home.
Right when she got it back home with the dog,
the turkey stopped and was back home and has been
there ever since. It's definitely worth watching that video. That
will if you're like, I don't know, I still like
to eat turkeys, and once you watch that one, that's
(32:03):
that's gonna be it for you. Pal. You can't eat
turkeys or dogs anymore. No, I can't eat pigs either.
So another I guess we mentioned the alarm call. Turkeys
have an astounding ability to communicate with each other. They
have a lot of different vocalizations. Mr Henry Ship's talks
about a lot of those, the different kinds of gobbles
(32:24):
that a turkey hunter has to be acquainted with and
make yourself to uh to attract turkeys. But there he
calls them yeps. Of course, there are three kinds of yelps.
There's the tree yelp, the plane yelp, and the plane
lost call uh and then there are a couple of
basic calls, the clock and the alarm put and then
(32:45):
a few other just uh complex calls. There's the cackle
of the gobble and what's called the ki ki, But
that tree yelp is what they're gonna make that sort
of their morning routine. The first thing they do in
the morning is start tree yelping, and it's basically like, hey, everybody,
good morning, how did you sleep, Good morning? Good morning.
(33:06):
There's the plane yelp, which is like, um, like just
during the day, if you want to say, hey, everybody,
let's let's come huddle up over here. Because when they
eat as a flock, they might spread out over a
quarter acre, but we've seen that they will always have
at least one constantly looking out and they'll trade that
job off, but there's always at least one bird looking
(33:28):
out for the rest of the flock ready to make.
A call. Might be a plane plane yelp, it might
be an alarm putt, but whatever that that is, it's
going to get the bird's attention very quickly. Right then
you have that plane lost call. It's sort of like
the plane yelp, but it's usually louder. It's got some
more urgency to it, um, and that they think is
more for family. It's like, hey, you and all your
(33:52):
brothers and sisters, get over here. Toot sweet yeah. Um.
There's also what else? The cluck, which is to say, hey, hey, chuck, cluck, cluck, cluck, chuck,
you look up what and I say, I forgot. I
was gonna say, you go back to eating. I just
said specific to a person, meaning a turkey person, right,
(34:15):
a tom or a him. Um, there's that alarm put
put which is basically like, hey, everybody, there's something weird
going on. The kiki is if a little poult or
a younger turkey is a little worried and wants to
be reassured or what, doesn't know where everybody is. That's
probably a pretty cute one. I listened to some of
these and um, they're not they're not. It's not on
(34:38):
a monopeia Like the ki ki doesn't sound like a
key key to me. I don't know what they're talking about,
but it sounds like a wine almost. It's weird. And
then you have the cackle, which, um, that's sort of
like hello and goodbye when you're coming into your rooster.
You're leaving in your roost, you're gonna cackle and say
I'm here, all right. Gobble. Everybody knows the gobble. But
(35:02):
it turns out that's actually not that frequent a sound.
It's one of the least frequent sounds they make because
it's typically made by Tom's when they're strutting their stuff
for you know, mating to you know, get it on,
literally strutting their stuff right. Um. And then here is
one of the facts of this chock full of fact podcasts.
(35:25):
Turkeys per and when they purr, it's quite obvious they're
purring with contentment, exactly like a cat. Yeah, it's pretty neat.
I saw another video of a turkey being stroked and
petted and it just crawled up on the person's lap purring.
So the other thing when they're when they've laid these
eggs and everything they and incubating, they will turn them periodically,
(35:48):
which is really great. And they're what they're doing that
is they're letting these letting the exchange oxygen and CEO
two as well as they think. And this makes a
lot of sense, keeping the little embryo from attaching to
one side of the egg. So if it starts to attach.
They'll just turn it and then it'll flop down and
not attach itself. And then there's also re nesting right
(36:12):
there is, which is basically like if the if the
turkey is disturbed during the nesting process, she may go
off and create a new nest. I get the impression
of the other eggs are abandoned, um or Remember we
said that she is emotionally invested after a certain point.
If she's disturbed, then she just abandons the nest and
doesn't do anymore nesting that season, which is very sad. Yeah,
(36:35):
that's super sad. So you want to take a break,
let's do it. Okay, we'll be right back, everybody, So Chuck,
(37:09):
I think at the beginning I was saying that turkeys
are way more intelligent than we think, and that's true,
right They a smart boy, one of the smartest we
got in this country. That's a good, good vern In Florida.
He's passed on, by the way, one of the cool uh.
And if you're interested in that movie, go see it.
(37:31):
And there's also a movie Crush episode where one of
my really really good friends, Mike comes on and talks
about vern In Florida and he actually struck up a
friendship with Henry Ship's via telephone for the remainder of
his life. Oh that's neat. That's a long telephone call. Well,
they talked off and on quite a bit. It was
(37:52):
really special. Yeah, I guess that's cool man. That's so
he just called him out of the blue. Yeah, he
and Henry, he would call him up, Well, hey, Mike,
how are you doing. But and this was twenty something
years after run in Florida was from the I think
early nineties or maybe even late eighties, and so he
just you know, he got a kick out of it
that that Mike thought he was famous. That's cool. That's
(38:12):
cool man. So you never answered my Oh yeah, you
did kind of answer my question. Turkeys are rather smart.
There's a a longstanding myth that turkeys are so stupid
they'll actually drown when it's raining because they look up
at the rain and the rain falls down their gullet
and draw them. That that's true. I've heard that before.
(38:34):
H it's true that there's a myth. The myth itself
is totally totally wrong. Um, that's been observed. Something similar
has been observed mistakenly in domesticated birds, meaning like factory
farm turkeys, and um, they've actually shown that if that
has ever happened, it's not the turkey looking up to
see the rain, because the turkey wouldn't look up to
(38:55):
see something above. It would look from the side of
its head because it has mon pocular vision yea, so
it wouldn't be looking at the rain. And if it
is looking up and has ever drowned or something or
seemed to have drowned, it was because it was having
a certain kind of seizure that apparently domesticated factory farm
turkeys have as a general condition. They have seizures and
(39:16):
actually die from those kind of seizures fairly frequently. So
they think some farm worker saw turkey have a seizure
while I was looking up while it was raining and
died and that actually might have given birth to this
incredibly wrong myth. It turns out that was my cousin. Uh.
(39:38):
They are smart and they have great memories, which is
you know, in the animal kingdom, memory is is a
is an interesting thing and a lot of times a
pretty good indicator of intelligence and just something more going
on there. Uh. Whild turkeys have a great memory. They
can remember very precise locations. They can go back to
the same location miles away at the same exact time
(40:02):
of day to get food, so they have a really
good internal clock as well. And uh hands and Tom's.
They can also chuck supposedly differentiate human faces, so like
they can tell humans who are different based on their face,
which is pretty smart if you ask me. Oh, totally. Um,
they can be a nuisance if you like have a farm. Um,
(40:25):
they're they're droppings can carry disease at times, but they
you know, they're easily scared. Like you said, like there's
a list of things and how to get rid of turkeys,
um that we came up with. Uh, well it didn't invent,
but came up with from experts. They've been testing them
out all week and it seems like all of them
(40:47):
are like you know, turkeys get scared super easily. So
scare them off or if they're a real problem on
your property, put up a uh a motion activated scarecrow
or water sprinkler or something like that. Um, any kind
of loud noise, flailing your arms. I don't get rid
of turkeys. They just they they're scared of you. They
want to get out of there. They're not aggressive. They
can be intimidating if you're a kid because they're big.
(41:09):
But even a kid's gonna scare a turkey off. Yeah,
they they are easy to scare off, but they can
also be really intimidating and aggressive, especially if it's a
tom during mating season. Um. So you're supposed to do
the same thing to turkeys that you do to coyotes,
and it's called hazing, where you show them your dominant
and you can do it by everything from turning the
(41:30):
hose on them, um, throwing a tennis ball in their
general direction. Opening umbrella is a big one. But you're
basically saying like, I'm not scared of you, and in fact,
I'm going to scare you off. Because if you don't
do that, apparently, then they become increasingly more difficult to
get rid of because they think they're dominant to you
or say a family member. And if you combine that
(41:50):
with somebody, whether it's you or a neighbor or something,
feeding the turkeys or even letting them eat bird seed
out of your bird feeder, Um, that's a that that
that can be a problem, actually, especially if you don't
like turkeys running at you. Yeah, and the other really
cool fact about hazing as they say that, like everyone
in your family has to do it. If you want
to solve your turkey problem, Like you've got to get
(42:12):
if grandma lives there, she's got to get out there
and haze that turkey. If you've got a four year old,
you gotta send that four year old out there to
haze that turkey supervised, I would imagine. But like every
person in that house has to exert their dominance. Yeah,
exert it with extreme prejudice all over that turkey. Gross.
So um, I guess that's it. One thing I saw chuck.
(42:34):
For Thanksgiving today, eight percent of Americans will eat turkey,
which actually, which seems right, doesn't seem high or low.
But get this, that translates to seven million pounds of
turkey on average, or forty six million turkeys all killed
and eating on a single day today. Goodness me. And
then that's a lot of turkeys. It's a lot of turkeys.
(42:57):
Uh so, uh, if you want to know more about turkey,
he's go watch some turkey and dog friendship videos and
uh that might make you regret what you just had
to eat. And since I said that, it's time for
listener mail. Uh yeah, and before listener mail, I just
want to close the window on the Vernon, Florida thing
(43:17):
if you uh don't know what I'm talking about. It
was a documentary originally, and this fairly interesting. Errol Morris
went down to this sleepy town, like I said, Inland
in the Florida Panhandle to do a documentary on these
people that live there who would cut off their limbs
for insurance money. And that was they were. It was
(43:37):
called stub Town was the nickname he went down there.
No one would talk about it. Uh, And so he
found himself down there without a documentary subject all of
a sudden, and so he just, after talking to these people,
said well, this town is a documentary in and of itself.
And he just turned the camera on the citizens and
there's probably like ten or twelve of them. It's sort
(44:00):
of interviewed through the whole thing that that's cut together,
and that's all it is is these people that live
in Vernon, Florida. Pretty cool. Yeah, I need to see
it one day. Yeah it is. It is a cult
classic and a true documentary legend. It's really great. Uh So,
listener mail, this comes from Erica. Hey, Josh, Chuck and
Jerry listen to the podcast episode on fruit flies. I
(44:21):
want to say that Chuck's pronunciation of the word drosophila
is correct. That's rare. Having worked in a basic research
laboratory for years, I've often pined for a science dictionary
to help with pronouncing scientific terminology and nomenclature. For example,
unless you chat with researchers on a regular basis, how
would you know to pronounce the gene b R c
(44:41):
A one as bracca one and c d o as kiddo,
while p D one is just p D one. I
don't know how you would know. You wouldn't You need
to make smart friends, I think is what it comes
down to. That's right, And she says, as long as
we're discussing pronunciations, you mentioned in your episode on the
US interstate system that Californians add the word the for
(45:04):
any freeway highway number. I've lived in the Bay Area
my whole life. I hesitate to generalize for all of
northern California, but at least in the Bay Area. Most
people say things like the rest of the country one
on one highway one on one instead of the one
on one anyone who says the one on one is
most likely from southern California. Got it? That makes sense? Yeah,
so I guess that is sort of that makes sense.
(45:25):
It's an l A thing, right, Yeah, That's what I
always associated with for sure. So that is Erica. Well
thanks a lot, Erica. That um email is just chock
full of info and we appreciate it big time. Thank you.
If you want to be like Erica and send us
an email chock full of info, we love them, you
can send it off to us at stuff podcast at
(45:47):
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you should know is a
production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts
for my heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts or where ever you listen to your pay
at ships
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Josh Clark
Chuck Bryant
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