Turkey Time: Spotlighting the Wild Turkey
by Meaghan Lyon, CWF Biologist
Over the years, the wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) has been widely domesticated for food and has become part of this country’s heritage for Thanksgiving dinner. There is evidence that Native Americans have been hunting turkeys as early as 1000 A.D. Each year, over 46 million turkeys are eaten each year on Thanksgiving – but how much do you really know about the turkey?
Instead of our holiday emblem, the wild turkey nearly found a drastically different role in American culture. Ben Franklin proposed it to be the official bird of the United States, and though some say he did it in jest, he praised the turkey as “a true original native of America…a bird of courage…and a much more respectable bird” than the bald eagle!
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