Community Corner

10 Things We Bet You Don't Know about Turkey Day

Test your turkey trivia knowledge by seeing how many of these facts you know.

By Editor Karen Sorensen

In honor of Thanksgiving, we present a few things you may not know about the holiday we're celebrating:

  1. It's a myth that it's the turkey eaten during Thanksgivingdinner that causes you to feel sleepy after the meal. Instead, you should credit the carbohydrate overload -- mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls, corn, dessert, etc.
  2. The average Thanksgiving turkey weighs about 15 pounds, but the heaviest one ever raised was 86 pounds -- the size of a large dog.
  3. Commercially raised turkeys cannot fly but wild turkeys can fly short distances at up to 55 mph and can run at 20 mph. Wild turkeys sleep in trees at night.
  4. The average American ate 16 pounds of turkey in 2012, which is up 104 percent since 1970. Israelis eat the most turkey of any nationality -- 28 pounds per year per person.
  5. The United States produced 253.5 million turkeys in 2012, 46 million of which were eaten at Thanksgiving, 22 million at Christmas and 19 million at Easter. The National Turkey Federation says 88 percent of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving.
  6. There are several theories as to how the bird came to be called turkey. One is Christopher Columbus, mistakenly believing the land he discovered was connected to India, called it "tuka," which is peacock in Indian. Another is it's a variation on the word "firkee," which is what Native Americans called the turkey. Yet a third is the name comes from the sound turkeys make when they're scared: "Turk, turk, turk."
  7. A turkey that is 16 weeks old or younger is called a fryer, one that five to seven months old is a roaster. Male turkeys are toms and females are hens. An older tom turkey is choicer than a younger one because the meat is less stringy; the exact opposite is true for hens.
  8. Turkeys can have heart attacks when shocked by loud noise. Many dead birds were discovered by the Air Force after flying planes over test areas where the sound barrier was broken.   
  9. The wild turkey has exceptional hearing and eyesight, making it one of the most difficult birds to hunt. Because they won't be flushed out by dogs, hunters rely on "calls" to try to lure them into the open. Even with two seasons a year, only one in six hunters will get a wild turkey.
  10. By the 1930s, wild turkeys were almost extinct because of hunting. Only thanks to conservation efforts has the population come back. The average wild turkey lives about three to four years.
Sources: The University of Illinois Extensionwww.almanac.com,www.infoplease.com

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