25 Turkey Facts: Surprising Secrets of a Bold, Bearded Bird

There are two species of turkey: the wild turkey of North America and the ocellated turkey of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula and nearby Central America.

Turkeys belong to the same bird group as chickens, pheasants, quails and grouse.

All domestic turkeys come from wild turkeys that people in ancient Mexico domesticated more than 2,000 years ago.

An adult male turkey is called a tom or gobbler, a young male is a jake, a female is a hen and a baby is called a poult.

A group of turkeys is called a flock or, more unusually, a rafter.

The fleshy flap that hangs over a male turkey's beak is called a snood, and the flap under its chin is called a wattle.

A turkey's bare head can change colour, from red to white to blue, depending on its mood or level of excitement.

Female turkeys tend to prefer males with longer snoods, which can be a sign of good health.

Many male turkeys have a "beard", a tuft of stiff, hair-like feathers growing from the middle of their chest.

Turkeys are named after a country they don't come from

When turkeys were first brought to Europe from the Americas in the 1500s, people confused them with guinea fowl, which were imported through the Ottoman Empire and were known as "turkey birds". The name stuck to the new bird. Other countries got just as mixed up. In Turkish, the bird is called "hindi", meaning "from India". In French it is "dinde", which comes from "d'Inde" ("of India"). In many Indian languages, as well as Portuguese, it is called "peru", after another country it doesn't come from.

Only male turkeys gobble. Females make softer clucks, purrs and yelps.

A male turkey's gobble can be heard more than a kilometre away.

Turkeys have excellent eyesight. Their eyes on the sides of their heads give them a very wide field of view, and they can see in colour.

Wild turkeys can run at about 40 kilometres per hour.

Unlike most farm turkeys, wild turkeys can fly, reaching speeds of around 80 kilometres per hour in short bursts.

At night, wild turkeys fly up to roost in the branches of trees, where they are safer from predators.

An adult turkey has around 5,000 to 6,000 feathers.

Wild turkeys eat seeds, nuts, berries, leaves and insects, and sometimes even small lizards or frogs.

Male turkeys puff up their feathers, fan out their tails and strut around to impress females.

Benjamin Franklin didn't really want the turkey as America's national bird

A popular story says that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey, not the bald eagle, to be the national bird of the United States. In reality, he never made that proposal. In a 1784 letter to his daughter, Franklin complained that the eagle on a new medal looked more like a turkey. He then joked that the turkey was "a much more respectable bird" than the eagle, which he called "a bird of bad moral character". The letter was private and playful, but it gave rise to a lasting myth.

The ocellated turkey has a bright blue head with orange bumps and colourful eye-like spots on its tail feathers, a bit like a peacock.

By the early 1900s, hunting and habitat loss had wiped out wild turkeys across much of North America. Conservation efforts have since brought their numbers back to millions.

A hen usually lays around 10 to 12 eggs, which hatch after about 28 days.

Baby turkeys can leave the nest and follow their mother to find food within a day of hatching.

In 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts ate roast turkey from foil pouches as part of their first meal on the Moon.