Gobble Gobble: Turkeys!

Published Nov 26, 2020, 10:00 AM

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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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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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. 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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. 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 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. 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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. 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, 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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 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, that's super sad. So you want to take a break, let's do it. Okay, we'll be right back, everybody, So Chuck, 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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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