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Welcome to Step, you should know a production of hot radio's HowStuffWorks. Gobble, gobble. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Bryant and there's Jerry Jérome. Roland can come up with anything less. That's right. And this is stuff you should know about Turkey. 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 1980s and inland Florida panhandle, small town and one of the lead characters. And in that documentary, it was Mr. Henry Shape's. 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 quote it a lot.

So it's really, really hard not to just talk like Henry Shape's.

So I'll try not to because it's so random that ninety nine point nine percent of the people it won't be worth it for like the hundred people. That'll think that's the best thing ever. I don't know, man.

I've found over the years that it's good to cater to those people.

Sometimes, you know, I might throw in an occasional and I'll explain what I'm talking about. Maybe, but 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 at 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. who's really in favor of turkeys boo suspiciously and on Thanksgiving Day, too. So we also need to apologize for we're not trying to guilt you or anything like that, maybe dives into this one for a week.

I will say, though, choke like I'm not eating turkey anymore after this. 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 it is tough. I knew turkeys were pretty cool and pretty smart, but 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 best a human misinterpretation, maybe at worst a cynical justification for eating them. 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.

Then he was the bald eagle. He had a big problem with the fact that eagles don't necessarily hunt as much as they bully other birds for whatever they just hunted. He said that the eagle does not get his living honestly. He steals from the fish hawk and is 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, I dare say 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, mail 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. Yeah. It's such an obvious pic. Like at one point during the year you got a red, white and blue bird.

Yeah, exactly. You see a bald eagle do that stupid eagle.

So the other thing, the other reason why and I think a lot of people think that Franklin said 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 as the great seal, 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. One, the common turkey, which is the kind that you or I or anybody else living north of Mexico are familiar with.

They're all over the place. They're all over the United States and Canada. But the weird thing is, is there's also turkeys in Central and South America. And it turns out that there are really hearty, adaptable species. And again, way smarter than then you probably give them credit for.

Yeah, I mean, turkeys, they do like warm weather, but they're they can survive in a lot. Like you said, I remember very distinctly when I lived in New Jersey one snowy morning looking into my backyard. And there were it was like a painting or something. There were three deer and six wild turkey. Wow. Just walking together. Through the snow in the backyard, and I didn't know that they would venture that far north, but they are all over the place they are.

Did you say the name of the the the ones in Mexico? No, the isolated turkeys? Yeah. In the Yucatan Peninsula in 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 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 Gobbler's or Thom's for young young males, they're called Jak's. Love that. And then adult females are hens and then hatchlings. Babies of both sexes are called poults pop ulz.

Yeah, the adult females are going to be about eight to 11 pounds. Adult males about 17 to 21. 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. Yeah. And every single adult turkey has what's called Carmichaels. A snood. Sounds like Dr. Seuss. And in a lab. Yeah, the chronicles of 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 touchable.

Yeah. 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, it's called the waddle. But these these things, the crinkles, the snood in the do lap are the things that make Turki's outrageously ugly to humans. But ironically, those are the things that attract other Turki's. Yeah, they, like you said, change color. They're unique to each turkey. And they 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 is just those things are just so ugly. They could stop clock and to the turkey, it's like, man, nice snood, but you're looking good.

Yeah. And I think Carnivàle Snood and do laugh would be like a great name for a comedy bluegrass trio that would be on heehaw, something like Oh my.

Oh uh. So the beer that I mentioned to learn in Florida reference. No, no, no, no, I'm paranoid. 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 one of those rat tails, you want to grow out for life. A lot of heehaw references, I guess.

Yeah, they grow about three to five inches a year. And if Vernon, Florida is to be is four in Florida's correct, then Mr. Shape's would point out that the longer the beard, the more sort of prized trophy it is. If you're a turkey hunter. Sure. Like they'd be akin to a large rack of antlers because they mount the beard on a little plaque. Right.

Right. The other thing about male Turkey is that you can differentiate from a female. 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 dew claws almost coming off of their legs and hence typically don't.

Right. And like I said, those males during breeding season, they turn the carnivals go red, the white is the crown of the head and then the neck and the side of the face go blue. And there's just nothing more American than that. It's true.

But that's just the the gobbler's right there. Hence the term don't turn. Yeah. Yeah. So like you said and I think I said first, you can find turkeys all over the place and all sorts of different conditions, whether it's hot out, whether it's covered in snow, whether there's deer around, who cares. Turkeys are down for hanging out. They just need or I should say prefer certain kinds of habitats, huge trees in a mature forest.

And typically they want mast bearing trees. And Mastech to remember what we were talking about recently. Oh, I think it was squirrels hiding nuts. Yeah. Mast is like one of my favorite words of all time. It's just so earthy and natural. I love it, but it means like acorns and tree nuts that you can find in North America. And that's one of the things that turkeys eat. So they need lots of trees that have lots of mass.

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.

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've never seen a turkey in a tree. Well, it sure, yeah, because they're diurnal, right? Well, yeah, I'm saying that must be the reason. Like I always see Turkey sort of just pecking around on the trail.

I think that's legitimate. I was laughing because you said you made it sound like the turkeys were hiking going.

Well, technically, I guess I get the with like big chunky socks on and Vaska. Yes, just being all serious.

But you mentioned their range. Their home range is what it's called in their home ranges dictated by how much food is around, how much of that mast is around. Right. 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 400 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 8000 acres or more height and travel up to 50 miles to different home ranges.

If they can't like they don't technically they don't migrate. But the birds maintaining 8000 acres and traveling 50 miles, they're migrating around. Kind of.

Yeah, but I mean, that must be a really poor habitat because turkeys are not picky eaters. In addition to mast, they'll eat everything from seeds to lizards and basically anything they find that's chock full of protein. They typically like things like seeds, plants, fruit, berries, that kind of stuff. But they'll eat live animals. They'll snake. Yeah, the latest snake, the lead in the crazy. Yeah. And in particular when A is born, the young turkey, the polt 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. They like that forest but they like the forest on the edge of some grassy areas because that moves them. They get them closer to those little insects that you're going to find for those poles.

Right, exactly. And that's actually where poles are born and raised, is in the grassy area at the edge of a forest, which is pretty cool and just quaint as all get out. It's it's like cottage care for animals, you know.

Yeah. If you think 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 are wrong. 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 dew, succulent insects, little small pools. 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 hibernate or anything, but they go into like this kind of like just hanging around the tree for the 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 bud or two that they can find on the tree they're sitting on.

Yeah. And, you know, they they do. Well, turkeys are thriving. They eat a lot. They one thing you will not see very much unless they're sick is skinny turkey. Undernourished turkeys are pretty rare. Like I said, unless you're some sort of disease or maybe if it's like in the middle of a really, really long winter, they might that thin up a little bit. But turkeys eat a lot and they're generally pretty healthy and plump.

Right. So like we said, they're diurnal, right? They they are active during the day, just like us humans. And you said they eat a lot, so they spend a significant amount of time eating. 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 it whole. It gets digested along the way and they poop out whatever's left on the other side.

But they also eat things like seeds and nuts and masks. And they have a gizzard, which is like a second stomach that hard stuff gets diverted to and the 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.

And until a few hours before sunset and then they start feeding again. Yeah. 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 10 to 20 miles an hour and fly in short bursts, up to 55 miles an hour to get back to those trees. Because once sundown comes, if they're not in their little homestead, which offers a lot of protection, they are there in big time danger for predators.

Sure. Can you just see a turkey like running back, like gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble their babies? So 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. Apparently, they have three times the acuity of the average human's eyesight.

And then in addition to that, they also see in color, which is rare for a bird, and they also have between a 270 and a 300 degree field of vision. Humans have about one hundred and 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 flipbook, but what it lacks and binocular vision it makes up for with its incredible hearing because their hearing is such that 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. Do you think we should take a break? I just that's fine. I'm just going to keep talking through the break because I'm just so in love with kids right now. All right. We'll be right back.

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So, you know, before the break, you were talking about their hearing in Vernon, Florida, which have you seen that yet? Still? No, I know I've not kind of see it. OK, it's one of the great documentaries that is. But Mr. Shape'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.

Right. Because of how smart, how smart they are. And he says they are smart, Boyd. He's one of those guys. I always like that. Yeah. Yeah. But 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 although I'm not a hunter at all and don't, I 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 surecsuresurecsurehecksurecsuresurecsureheckheckheck. How much he loved it, I don't know.

So, 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 as far as they're flocking and their behaviors, they live in separate flocks, the, 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 going to leave their winter flocks and they're going to start, you know, now it's time to party basically with the hens. Yeah, they're going to start like many animals there.

A lot of rituals of trying to get their attention. They're gobbling. They have a peak, a couple of peaks and 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 male, then you're going to have a second flock after, ah, most of the mating has taken place, a lot less gambling going on.

And but those males who didn't make it 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 and gobbling is kind of the more desperate. It's like, you know, at 150 a.m. at the bar. Oh, totally. It's like there's anyone, anyone still in a party, basically anybody around? No, but you got to do it like the, um, the night of the Roxbury guys.

But they're saying gobble instead of him, I think.

Tom can and will meet with multiple hens and hens actually may breed with the same male 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 time until they've mated. If you are out west, you might see what's called a lack like system elec, which is it's basically a I mean, it's sort of group mating and group, uh, group gobbling like a bunch of times will get together and sort of cobble together.

A lot of times a group of siblings like, you know, the 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 of the the harem makes sense because there's just such an abundance of turkeys that one one Jake or No. 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, but also because all these different displays of like manliness, of timeliness, I guess 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 Lexx system.

Yeah. And you actually did not misspeak because Jak's can mate, they're just way less successful because they're Jak's. Yeah. Maybe there's some hens that sit around and say, like, you know, I'm really more into Jak's than Tom's because it was like Niazi.

Well, I never. But they do Jak's actually can mate. But, you know, because it's because they're they attract females by those big shows and the best garbles, 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 going to talk about in every episode, and then we actually talk about like maybe 70 percent of it. Yeah, but there's actually there's hierarchy's in Turkey flocks, which we'll talk about. But when the Carter brothers show up or there's young Jak's and older ones, 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 that actually makes sense because turkeys, it turns out, are super, super social animals, which makes the fact that the hens, once they have mated and go off to lay the eggs, they do that themselves. It's basically the one thing they do as individuals, but they do like basically to a hen. They will go off, they will find a nice grassy area at the entrance of a nice wood and they will start laying eggs and they'll lay one egg and cover it up, then leave in 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, OK, I'm I'm emotionally invested in these eggs. Now I'm just going to stay around here and guard them and then eventually incubate them. And they do. And then about 24 hours before the eggs start to hatch, they actually start making sounds, basically saying, I'm about to come out now.

Yeah, it's really cute, this little pipping sounds and this pecking with and this is one of the cutest words I've ever seen.

The first little hole 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 probably amazing. And I know the hen is entranced because the hen starts to make little encouraging clucks like come along little. That's right. Let's get on out. Let's get on out. And could take about a day for all these poults 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. Yeah, a pretty short while for a couple of days.

They all sit around together, they, they imprint on one another and they've 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 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, right.

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 a couple of weeks, they can't fly. So they're real vulnerable because remember, the the mom nests in grassland, not in the trees.

So until they can fly, they can't roost in trees. So they're their 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. One of the things when a mother hen gives birth to a brood of poults there usually there's a one to one ratio between males and females, between Jak's 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, I think very few of them survive. But it is it is medically impossible for a hen to to produce 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. Right. Which is counterintuitive to me. I think if it's an 11, if it's an evolutionary adaptation, it would seem like there would be female.

Yeah, I don't know, but it's like bees like our art on. Unfertilised eggs, don't they turn into male drones and it's just the fertilized ones that become female workers? I don't remember, so 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 parthenogenesis, you know. Yeah. So now you've got all the all the little poles have hatched and they've they've been running around eating bugs in the grass and it's been about 17 days and now they can fly. So they're starting to roost in the tree. And at first adorably they're still scared, little baby. 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 in the roost. And what you've got now is a new flock of turkeys. But like I was saying, turkeys are extremely social creatures. So those flocks typically tend to join other flocks, especially mother hens. With New Paltz.

They'll live with other flocks of mother hens with their own poults, 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 heartstrings 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, 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 poles and join us. Come have Thanksgiving with us. I mean, that's they don't say that word.

So you've got the T word is what they say today. So there's there's that's one kind of flock. There's also a lot of like the Jak's, the young males in the that flock will continue to stay until I believe the fall. And they'll leave and they'll go for mother flocks with other Jak's and sometimes older Gobbler's and especially with their siblings, too. They'll hang out with them and then it'll the the young hands of the mother hens will stay together and form their own flock.

So there's different flocks, but turkeys are so social that they've been found to. If you take a bird, a turkey from its flock and put it somewhere else, it'll basically 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're removed from their flock. And I was watching this video called Turkey and Dog. Best friends are inseparable colonies.

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 polt 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 and 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 if you're like, oh, no, no, I still like to eat turkeys at once. You watch that one.

That's that's going to 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. Yeah, they have a lot of different vocalizations. Mr. Henry Shape's talks about a lot of those the different kinds of garbles that a Turkey hunter has to be acquainted with and make yourself to to attract turkeys. But there he calls them yelps. Of course, there are three kinds of yelps. There's the tree Yelp, the plane Yelp and the plain lost call.

And then there are a couple of basic calls, the clock and the alarm put and then a few other just complex calls. There's the cackle, the gobble and what's called the Qiqi. But that tree up is what they're going to make. That's 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. 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? Yep, it might be an alarm, but but whatever that that is, it's going to get the birds 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. And that, they think is more for families like, hey, you and all your brothers and sisters get over here to sweet. Yeah.

There's also what else? The cluck, which is to say, hey, hey, Chuck. Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck. You look up to a person. What? And I say, I forgot. I was going to say, you go back to eating.

I just said, specific to a person. Meaning a turkey person. Right. A tom or a hen. There's that alarm putt putt, which is basically like, hey, everybody, there's something weird going on. The keiki is if a little polt or a younger turkey is a little worried and wants to be reassured or doesn't know where everybody is, that's probably a pretty cute one. I listen to some of these and they're not they're not it's not onomatopoeia.

Like the doesn't sound like a keiki 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 that's sort of like hello and goodbye. When you're coming into your room or you're leaving in your roost, you're going to cackle and say, I'm here.

All right, the 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 Thom's when they're strutting their stuff for, you know, mating to, you know, get it on. Literally strutting their stuff, right? And then here is one of the facts of this chock full of fact podcast's turkeys purr 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 curled up in the person's lap purring. Amazing. It is.

So the other thing, when they're when they've laid these eggs and everything and incubating, they will turn them periodically, which is really great. And they are what they're doing. That is they're letting these letting the exchange oxygen and CO2 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 nice.

And then there's also 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 the other eggs are abandoned. 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 any more nesting that season, which is very sad.

Yeah, that's super sad and green. So you want to take a break.

Let's do it. OK, we'll be right back, everybody.

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Some. Hey, Chuck, did you know that over the last 12 years, Subaru of America Inc and its participating retailers have donated more than 176 million dollars to help those in need through the Subaru share the love event? I did.

And at the end of this year, 13th year, that's going to be over 200 million dollars. That's amazing. Through the share the love event, the ASPCA has had a significant impact on things like rescuing and transporting and adopting out more than 64000 animals across the country.

Yeah, they also work with Make a Wish, one of the best foundations out there. And they've granted life changing wishes of more than 2500 kids with critical illnesses.

Yeah, not to mention Meals on Wheels in the National Park Foundation and National Park System have definitely benefited from the Subaru share the love event.

That's right. So you can get a great vehicle and support a great cause. With every new Subaru purchased or leased, Subaru will donate 250 dollars to your choice of charities November 19th through January 4th.

So, Chuck, I think at the beginning, I was saying that turkeys are way more intelligent than we think that's true, right?

They are smart, Boyd, one of the smartest we got in this country. That's a good government. Florida accent. He's passed on, by the way, one of the cool. And if you're interested in that movie, go see it. And there's also a movie Crash episode where one of my really, really good friends, Mike, comes on and talks about we're in Florida and he actually struck up a friendship with Henry Shape's via telephone for the remainder of his life.

Oh, that's neat. That's a long telephone call.

Well, they talk to Afnan quite a bit. It was really godshall. Yeah, I guess that's cool, man. So he just called them out of the blue.

Yeah. He and Henry, he would call them up. Well, hey, Mike. How you doing, buddy? And this was 20 something years after a run in Florida was from the, I think early 90s or maybe even late 80s. 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. Mhm. So you never answered.

Oh yeah. You did kind of answer my question. Turkeys are rather smart. There's a a long standing 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 there. Go rides them. I've never heard that. No it's true. I've heard that before. It's true that there's a myth. The myth is totally, totally wrong. True. It's been observed. Something similar has been observed mistakenly in domesticated birds, meaning like factory farm turkeys.

And 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 monocular vision. Yeah.

So it would be looking at the rain and if it is looking up and is ever drowned or something or seem 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 they have seizures and actually die from those kind of seizures fairly frequently. So they think some farm worker saw a turkey have a seizure while it 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, right. They are smart and they have great memories, which is, you know, in the animal kingdom, memory is a is an interesting thing and a lot of times a pretty good indicator of intelligence and just something more going on there. Wild 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. You get food.

So they have a really good internal clock as well.

And hands and arms, they can also check, 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.

They can be a nuisance if you like, have a farm there.

Their droppings can carry disease at times, but they, you know, they're easily scared, like you said, like there's a list of things, how to get rid of turkeys, um, that we came up with more, didn't invent, but came up with from experts.

We'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 motion activated scarecrow or a water sprinkler or something like that. Yeah. Any kind of loud noises flailing your arms. I will get rid of turkeys. They just they're scary. 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 the kid's going to 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 time during mating season. 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, 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 birdseed out of your bird feeder. Yeah, that's a that there can be a problem, actually, especially if you don't like turkeys running at you. Yeah.

And the other really cool fact about hazing is they say that. Like everyone in your family has to do it if you want to solve your turkey problem like. Got to get if Grandma lives there, she's got to get out there and has that turkey. If you've got a four year old, you got to sit that four year old out there days that Turkey supervised, I would imagine. Yeah. But like every person in that house has to exert their dominance.

Yeah. Exert it with extreme prejudice all over that turkey. Gross.

So I guess that's one thing I saw for Thanksgiving today, 88 percent of Americans will eat Turkey, which actually seems right. Doesn't seem high or low. But get this, that translates to 700 million pounds of turkey on average, or 46 million turkeys all killed and eaten on a single day today. Goodness me.

And that's a lot of turkeys. It's a lot of turkeys. So if you want to know more about turkeys, go watch some turkey and dog friendship videos. And that might make you regret what you just said. Eat. And since I said that, it's time for the listener mail.

Yeah.

And before listener mail, I just want to close the window on the Vernon, Florida thing. If you don't know what I'm talking about. It was a documentary originally and this is 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 Stumptown was the nickname. He went down there.

No one would talk about it. 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 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. That's so listener mail. This comes from Erica. Hey, Josh, Chuck and Gerri, listen to the podcast episode on Fruit Flies. I want to say that Chuck's pronunciation of the word Drosophila is correct. Oh, uh, 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 how to pronounce the gene BRCA one as Bracher one and CD30 as Kitto while PD one is just PD 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 before 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 associate it with for sure.

So that is Erica. Well, thanks a lot, Erica. That email was 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 that I heart. Radio dot com.

Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart radio, because the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. We're all shopping for essentials online these days, and now you can get rewarded for it with the Bank of America cash rewards credit card, you can choose to earn three percent cashback on online shopping essentials. The essentials have never felt more rewarding. Visit Bank of America dot com. More rewarding to apply now.

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