15 Fun Facts About Turkeys and Thanksgiving

Impress your holiday guests with these fun facts about turkeys and Thanksgiving. I had a blast compiling these. Hope you enjoy them!

15: Only Male Turkeys Gobble

Male turkeys are called “gobblers” because of their famous call — their version of a rooster’s crow — a loud shrill, descending, throaty jumble of sound that lasts about one second. Males often gobble from treetop roosts, where the sound carries better than on the ground. They gobble to attract females and to respond to other males. Sometimes one male’s call can lead to a group joining in, much like wolves howl in unison.

Both male and female turkeys cackle as they fly down from roosts. They give short, soft purrs while traveling on foot and use a long series of yelps to reassemble a flock after turkeys startle and scatter. Young turkeys whistle three or four times to flock-mates when they’re lost. A strutting male uses a chump sound followed by a low hum, neither of which are well understood by the scientific community yet.

14: Wild Turkeys Can Fly

I learned this fascinating fact when my husband flapped a towel to shoo a large group from our yard (we get bombarded by wild turkeys, sometimes 50 or more at a time). Yes, I love all animals, but 50+ turkeys leave landmines of poo and devour all the food for my crows, chippies, squirrels, woodchucks, jays, and numerous other birds. The rule in my yard is: “Everybody eats at the pleasure of the Poe.” Meaning, as long as my crows are happy, you can stay. If Poe tells me you’ve stepped out of line, you’re gone. And everyone understands this, except the turkeys. Although, all summer I had a single hen — affectionally named Miss Lonelyhearts — who was an absolute doll. She visits less often now. Poor baby’s probably hiding from hunters.

Back to my point…

Dozens of wild turkeys in flight can only be described as hilarious. They’re not graceful fliers by any means. LOL Shockingly, they can reach speeds of up to 55 mph in short bursts!

13: Eating Turkeys Won’t Make You Sleepy

While everyone blames the amino acid tryptophan for knocking us out after a Thanksgiving feast, the truth is turkey doesn’t contain all that much tryptophan. The sleepy or sluggishness we feel has more to do with piggin’ out on all the appetizers, side dishes, main meal, and desserts.

12: No One Ate Turkey At The First Thanksgiving

The modern Thanksgiving holiday is based off a three-day festival shared by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe at Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, in 1621. The feast celebrated the colonists’ first successful harvest in the New World. While modern Thanksgiving always lands on the fourth Thursday in November, the original feast happened earlier in fall, closer to harvest time in mid-October, when Canadians celebrate. And no one ate turkey.

Two firsthand accounts describe a feast of freshly killed deer, assorted wildfowl, a bounty of cod and bass, and flint, a native corn harvested by the Wampanoag and eaten as corn bread or porridge.

We can only speculate about other foods they feasted on over the course of three days. Wildfowl — most likely duck or geese, pigeons or swans — stuffed with onions and nuts. Lobster, mussels, and eel also make sense for that period in Massachusetts. Native crops such as peas, beans, squash, and flint corn probably also made an appearance on the table, along with vegetables brought over from England, such as cabbage and carrots. Cranberries may have been incorporated into Wampanoag dishes to add tartness, but it’d be another 50 years before someone first wrote about adding sugar to make a “sauce to eat with… meat.” And no gravy (flour wasn’t invented yet) or pie!

11: For The Last 40 Years, We’ve Had A Turkey Hotline

Did you know this?

Professionally trained turkey experts at Butterball field over 100,000 emergency calls during the holiday season. Throughout the years they’ve expanded to meet the modern holiday household. If you can’t get through the old-fashioned way by dialing 1-800-BUTTERBALL, connect through social media, live chat, texting — or even through Amazon’s Alexa!

10: A Raccoon Received A Presidential Pardon For Thanksgiving

In November 1926, a Mississippi man gifted President Calvin Coolidge a raccoon for his Thanksgiving dinner. Since he and the First Lady were animal lovers, he didn’t have the heart to kill the little cutie pie. Instead, he named her Rebecca and added her to the collection of First Family pets, which included a bear, hippo, hordes of dogs, and two lion cubs.

9: The Bird Name “Turkey” Stems From A Case Of Mistaken Identity

During the Ottoman Empire, guinea fowl were exported from East Africa via Turkey to Europe. Europeans called the birds “turkey-cocks” or “turkey-hens” due to the trade route. So, when Europeans first sailed to North America and discovered birds that looked like guinea fowl, they called them turkeys. To be clear, turkeys and guinea fowl are two different animals.

8. The Creation Of TV Dinners Stem From A Thanksgiving Mishap

In 1953, a Swanson employee accidentally over-ordered 260 tons of turkey. The frozen turkeys took up space in ten refrigerated train cars, when a company salesman suggested preparing and packaging the turkey with sides in compartmentalized aluminum trays. Swanson sold 5,000 TV dinners that year. That number grew to 10 million following year.

7: Cranberries Aren’t Just Tasty — They’re Medicine

Readers of Unnatural Mayhem and Restless Mayhem should remember this. 😉 Native Americans have used cranberries to treat wounds and dye arrows. Much like holly, dried cranberries also adorn table centerpieces, wreaths, and garlands.

6: The Term “Black Friday” Backfired 

Even though Black Friday now signals the biggest shopping day of the year, in 1966, the Philadelphia Police Department used “Black Friday” in the hopes that it would deter shoppers from leaving the house and adding to the traffic and commotion of the Army-Navy football game.

5: You Can Sex Turkeys By Their Poo

Strangely, a male turkey’s poop is J-shaped, while a female’s looks more like a spiral.

4: Turkeys Can See Better Than Us

One of the more surprising facts I found is turkeys have three-times better vision than humans. They can also see color, and their eyesight covers 270 degrees.

3: A Native American Interpreted For Pilgrims

Squanto, also known as Tisquantum, was a Native American from the Patuxet tribe, who was a key figure to the Pilgrims during their first winter in the New World. He acted as both an interpreter and guide as Pilgrims learned to adjust to their new way of life at Plymouth.

Born circa 1580 near Plymouth, Massachusetts, little is known about his early life. As a young man, Squanto was kidnapped along the Maine coast in 1605 by Captain George Weymouth, who’d been commissioned by Plymouth Company owner, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, to explore the coast of Maine and Massachusetts and capture Squanto and four unnamed Penobscots, because he thought his financial backers in Britain might want to see some [American] Indians.

Weymouth brought Squanto and the Penobscots to England, where Squanto lived with Ferdinando Gorges, who taught him English.

Side notes before I continue: Make no mistake, none of these so-called men gave Squanto or the unnamed Penobscots a choice. They were torn away from their land, from their families, and forced to learn English, to assimilate into an unfamiliar culture. Many of these stories make it seem like the Europeans helped Native Americans, rather than the stark reality of kidnapping, rape, slavery, and unmerciful torture that led to genocide.

Now fluent in English, Squanto returned to his homeland in 1614, where he was kidnapped again. This time, by an English explorer, Thomas Hunt, who took him to Spain and sold him into slavery. Squanto escaped, lived with monks for a few years, and eventually found his way back to North America in 1619, only to find his entire Patuxet tribe dead from smallpox. He went to live with the nearby Wampanoags.

In 1621, Squanto met the Pilgrims at Plymouth, where he acted as an interpreter between Pilgrim representatives and Wampanoag Chief Massasoit. Later that fall, they celebrated the first Thanksgiving.

2: The Fourth Day of November Is Also The “National Day of Mourning.”

Before you celebrate the holiday with loved ones, take a moment to remember the events leading up to the first Thanksgiving. Years of conflict took place between the Europeans and Wampanoag People. Millions of Native People died.

MILLIONS!

The only reason the Pilgrims could even settle in Plymouth was because the Wampanoag population had been devastated by disease, virtually wiped out by a plague Europeans brought with them years before.

Since 1970, many gather on the last Thursday of November at the top of Cole’s Hill, overlooking Plymouth Rock, to commemorate a “National Day of Mourning.”

1: Turkey Feathers

This is such a fun fact. The American Plume & Fancy Feather Co. dyed 4,000 turkey feathers bright yellow to create the perfect look for Big Bird. No wonder he looks so fluffy. Who knew?

Also, turkey feathers are used for smudging.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. How many of these did you know? Do you have a favorite?