Turkeys
| Turkeys | ||||||||||
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Turkey , male ( Meleagris gallopavo ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Meleagris | ||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1758 |
The turkeys ( Meleagris ) are a genus of the pheasant-like . The only two types are restricted to North and Central America. By far the best known species is the real turkey , while the peacock turkey is much rarer.
features
Male turkeys reach a height of 1 m and a weight of 10 kg when standing. Females are slightly smaller and much lighter (90 cm, up to 5 kg), but still much larger than any other chicken bird in North America. The actual turkey and the peacock turkey differ in their plumage color, but are almost identical in their skeleton structure.
The ponderous body reveals a mainly ground-dwelling bird that runs rather than flies even when fleeing. The strong legs are each equipped with a spur up to 3.5 cm long on the tarsometatarsus . The wings allow a powerful flight over short distances. In this, fast wing beats alternate with gliding phases. Flight speeds of 100 km / h can be achieved.
The plumage is usually dark brown and black and has a metallic sheen in green and red tones, especially in the male. The male's head and neck are featherless. A lobe-like appendage (caruncle) rises above the beak; this becomes 6 to 8 cm long and hangs across or lengthways over the beak. The bare skin areas are particularly bright during the breeding season, and in the actual turkey they also change their colors.
distribution and habitat
The distribution area extends from the southern edge of Canada over the USA and Mexico to Belize and Guatemala . Domesticated turkeys can be found around the world today.
The ideal habitat are forests with spacious clearings or forest edges. Turkeys need thick undergrowth to hide and breed in, trees for sleeping and grassy areas for foraging. The wild turkey has now become a cultural follower and has also made its home in the parks of the suburbs.
Way of life
activity
Turkeys are diurnal birds that - apart from the breeding season - are sociable. There are associations of hens and their offspring as well as pure male associations. The groups consist of six to twenty animals. Although they are rather loose associations, the composition of which changes frequently, there is a fixed pecking order that is maintained through aggressive behavior and occasional fights.
The day is spent on the ground, while trees are used as sleeping places, and nowadays also high-voltage pylons and buildings.
nutrition
Young turkeys only eat insects at the beginning of their life. They eat around 3000 to 4000 insects a day. From the sixth week of life they also start eating plant-based foods. Adult turkeys then eat almost exclusively plants and only take insects as complementary food. Plants that are eaten in summer are seeds, berries and nuts, in winter roots are dug up or tree buds are eaten. In harsh winters, turkeys can survive without food for up to two weeks; they then lose up to 50% of their body weight, but recover from it again.
To aid digestion, turkeys swallow gastroliths .
Reproduction
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In courtship time the roosters roll to attract a hen. For courtship they fluff up their feathers, spread their tail feathers and inflate their throat sac. Wild turkeys court synchronously in fraternal communities, whereby only the highest-ranking brother mates a hen. Mating takes about four minutes here.
Then eight to fifteen eggs are laid in a nest that is just a hollow in the bottom. The eggs are cream-colored, with brown spots, about 6 × 4.5 cm in size and are incubated for 28 days.
Turkeys have a maximum lifespan of ten years, but most of the time they do not get older than five years.
Enemies
Since turkeys breed on the ground, the eggs and young are particularly exposed to enemies. Especially red fox , gray fox , skunk and raccoon are dangerous to the broods. Adult birds are beaten by coyotes , bobcats and golden eagles .
Tribal history and systematics
The origin of the turkeys is believed to be in the Miocene in Central America. Numerous fossil turkeys are known from the Pliocene and Pleistocene . The finds show that the genus was also widespread in northern South America until the Pleistocene, where there are no more turkeys today.
Turkeys are often run in a separate family, Meleagrididae. However, this is not tenable as the pheasant-like would then be paraphyletic . The correct position is therefore within the pheasant-like. Today, the two species are mostly assigned to a common genus Meleagris . The position of the peacock turkey in its own genus Agriocharis is no longer common, as both turkey species can be crossed with one another and can also produce fertile offspring.
A distinction is made between these types:
- Turkey ( Meleagris gallopavo ) with the domesticated form, Haustruthuhn ; Canada, USA, Mexico
- European turkey ( Meleagris ocellata ); Mexico, Belize, Guatemala
Humans and turkeys
The actual turkey already played an outstanding role as a meat supplier for the Indian peoples . They domesticated it too, and the Spaniards brought it to Europe from Mexico. A detailed account of the importance of the turkey for humans can be found in the article turkey . The importance of the peacock turkey for humans has always been much less.
Names
The part of the name Trut- is etymologically used as onomatopoeia for the animal's call trut-trut or the corresponding call of its owner or droten in Middle Low German ("threaten", Old Norse þrutna "swell", Old English þrutian "swell with anger or pride") and thus traced back to the animal's typical threatening gesture. The oldest High German evidence of this name comes from 1673 ( Christian Weise , Die drei ärgsten Erznarren: "a Calecutian rooster, or as one calls the tame venison in German, a turkey").
The English name turkey ( "Turkish Hahn") referred to in English originally the guinea fowl because this from Numidia on Turkey came to Europe, and was then transferred after the discovery of the New World mistakenly turkeys (so occupied since 1555). The same transfer exists with the scientific name Meleagris chosen by Carl von Linné . Because greek . μελεαγρίς , lat . meleagros (or gallina africana , "African chicken"), was the name of the guinea fowl in Greco-Roman antiquity, with a name probably derived from onomatopoeia, which in Greek mythology was associated with the name of Meleagros : after that the sisters were born des Meleager, the Meleagrids, transformed into guinea fowl by the goddess Artemis and weep tears over the death of their brother ever since, from which the amber is made.
Indian or (occupied since 1531) Indian chicken , French . coq d'Inde (first 1548, "Rooster of India", cf. French term "dinde" for turkey), the turkey was called in the early modern period when India became the "New India" America. Also kalkutisches Chicken (1555), it then Kalikuter (1750), Kalekuten and coach Hahn , it was sometimes called, after the name of the city Kalikat (Engl. Calicut ), founded from which the Portuguese her East Indian Empire, and the synonym for exotic, far away. The term Indian was also used earlier.
In dialect, the designation as Indian , Indian or in Styria as Janisch has remained in use in some regions until recently. The joking name used in Styria of the ready-to-eat turkey as a windy sparrow , on the other hand, is not supposed to be derived from its (Indian) Janean origin, but rather to be related to the fact that the Slovene population group of the " Windisch " in particular has a name there as the breeder and supplier of the bird would have.
Besides, there exists a variety of dialectal names, some of which are attributed to the irritability or anger sounds of the animal such as, for example, Koller Hahn ( nd . Kullerhaon, Ostfries . Kuler ) are partly interpreted as borrowed, such as the common parts of Austria Poger , Pogger ( lein ) Pockerl of Hungarian dialect poka < Pulyka .
literature
- Josep del Hoyo et al .: Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 2: New World Vultures to Guinea Fowl. Lynx Edicions, 1994, ISBN 84-87334-15-6 .
- Georg Weitzenböck: The German names of the turkey . In: Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung 12 (1936), pp. 83-89
