With Thanksgiving approaching, turkeys are everywhere, from grocery store advertisements to holiday decorations. But there’s one question about America’s favorite holiday bird that might catch you off guard: Can turkeys actually fly?
The answer is yes, but there’s a catch. Wild turkeys are surprisingly powerful fliers, while the domesticated birds raised for Thanksgiving dinner generally cannot fly.
And wild turkeys aren’t just capable of getting off the ground. According to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, they can reach speeds of up to 54 miles per hour. That’s faster than most people would ever expect from a bird best known for waddling around fields and forests. They can even swim!
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The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service also confirms that wild turkeys can fly at speeds approaching 50 mph, despite spending much of their time walking on the ground.
So why don’t we see them flying around like pigeons or geese? The explanation comes down to how their bodies work. According to the National Wildlife Federation, wild turkeys are built for quick takeoffs and bursts of speed rather than long-distance flight.
They typically use their wings to escape predators or reach the branches where they sleep at night. In fact, the Pennsylvania Game Commission explains that wild turkeys regularly fly into trees at sunset and return to the ground the following morning.
But the turkeys raised for Thanksgiving dinner are a different story. A scientific study found that selective breeding for meat production has dramatically increased the breast muscle mass of domestic turkeys.
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Researchers explained that wild turkeys use short bursts of flight to escape danger and reach their nighttime roosts, behaviors largely absent in commercial domestic birds. The study helps explain why modern commercial turkeys, despite having wings, are generally too heavy and differently proportioned to fly effectively.
So the next time someone insists that turkeys can’t fly, you can tell them otherwise. Their wild cousins might just surprise them by taking off at highway speeds.
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