Top 10 facts about turkeys

IT IS time to honour the humble turkey, who give their lives to enable us to have a good Christmas dinner.

 

Our domestic turkeys are descended from the wild turkeys of America

 

1. Our domestic turkeys are descended from the wild turkeys of America which were domesticated by the Aztecs in Mexico around 2,000 years ago.

2. Turkeys are able to recognise each other from their voices. 3. Male turkeys produce spiral droppings, females’ droppings are shaped like a letter J.

4. We call them turkeys because Turkish traders brought the birds to England from Spain.

Turkeys are able to recognise each other from their voices

 

A female turkey is a hen, a male is a tom

Only male turkeys make a gobbling sound       

 

5. The French thought turkeys came from India, so called it dinde: d’Inde means from India.

6. The Turkish for turkey is hindi, also meaning from India.

7. A female turkey is a hen, a male is a tom. Only male turkeys make a gobbling sound, so they are sometimes called gobblers.

 

 

8. Useful turkey word: snood – the long fleshy bit over a male’s beak.

9. Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 contains the line “the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved,” but the play is set before turkeys reached England.

10. The use of turkey to mean a bad film or play comes from a 19th century US habit of serving bad turkeys between Thanksgiving and Christmas.