Awesome Animal Fact - Wild Turkeys

Did you know the wild turkeys of North America almost went extinct in the 1930s? Mainly due to overhunting and loss of their forest habitat. Actually, their decline began back in the 1600s, when European colonists began aggressively hunting them and clearing forest to make farmland.

Today, domestic turkeys are often part of a traditional Thanksgiving meal, but by 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving an official U.S. holiday, wild turkeys were completely gone from Connecticut, Vermont, New York and Massachusetts. By the 1930s, they were nearly extinct everywhere. Thanks to intensive state and federal efforts over the last 90 years, there are now 6 to 7 million wild turkeys in North and Central America.

Let's consider a few more wild turkey tidbits. The bird's name actually comes from the name of the country, Turkey. Here's the story: In the Middle Ages, a bird called the African guinea fowl was brought to Europe, first becoming established on farms in Turkey. Eventually, the African guinea found its way to farms all over Europe, and people called it the Turkey bird. When Europeans first ventured to North America, they thought wild turkeys resembled the African guineas (Turkey birds) from back home, so they called them turkeys.

Domestic turkeys (as opposed to wild turkeys) did not originate in the United States. They have a rather interesting history. The Mayans of southern Mexico were the first to domesticate turkeys, about 2,000 years ago. Early Spanish explorers took some of these domesticated turkeys back home with them, and before long, domestic turkeys became common on farms throughout Europe. Then, when Europeans began migrating to the eastern United Sates, they brought domestic turkeys with them, completing a "turkey circle" back to North America.

So, domestic turkeys are not descendants of the wild turkey subspecies that live in the U.S. Instead, they came, via Europe, from a subspecies of southern Mexico.

Confusing, huh?

Photo Credit:
- Wild turkeys - DepositPhotos