OSU poultry scientist gets the word
out on Thanksgiving's most underappreciated bird
By Aaron Hougham
Barometer Staff Writer
Call someone a lemming, sheep or turkey and there's a good chance
their feelings will be hurt.
Why?
As everyone knows, these animals have been lumped together because
they share a commonly observed trait: stupidity.
Not so fast, says Tom Savage, poultry scientist and animal science
professor at Oregon State University.
With many students celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend, Savage
sees the perfect opportunity to get the truth out about turkey intelligence.
As a nationally known researcher, he is doing what he can to battle
against turkey stereotypes.
Every year around this time, Savage makes an extra effort to correct
the misconceptions about this underrated bird.
He's had enough of seeing turkeys take the brunt of public misunderstanding.
One simply has to open the paper to see the caricatures and turkey
disrespect displayed in popular media.
"They have no idea what they are talking about," Savage
contends.
He said that one popular misconception is that turkeys are so stupid
they will stare at rain until they drown.
He and his colleagues searched for an answer to this phenomenon.
In the early 1990s they discovered a genetic condition called tetanic
torticollar spasms. This condition causes some birds to act abnormally,
sometimes cocking their heads and starting at the sky for 30 seconds
or more.
"It's an example of how a misunderstood animal behavior becomes
identified as proof that the animal is extremely lacking in intelligence,"
Savage said in a recent press release.
To understand the true turkey potential, Savage recommends looking
to its wild ancestors.
Unlike the turkeys purchased at Safeway, these turkeys could fly
and had a keen ability to blend in with surroundings to escape predation.
"How many hunters come home with a wild turkey?" Savage
asked.
Indeed, the awkward appearance and customary turkey-waddle most
often attributed to turkeys' feeble-mindedness cannot be blamed
on the bird.
Rather, these strange behaviors are the result of domestication
and selective breeding to create meaty, heavy birds.
Providing another example of their intelligence, Savage had an
illustration most college students could relate to.
"If you throw an apple to a group of turkeys, they'll play
with it together," he said. "Kind of like football."
Savage asks, "If turkeys are so dumb, then why do they socialize
like that?"
In the 1990s, Oregon State ended what had been a 50-year relationship
with the bird. Since the 1940s, free-range turkeys had been raised
and studied across from the current day OSU Dairy farm.
"We used to have turkeys all over," Savage said. "It
was beautiful."
Aaron Hougham is a staff writer for The Daily Barometer. He can
be reached at baro.campus@studentmedia.orst.edu.
United Poultry Concerns, Inc.
PO Box 150
Machipongo, VA 23405-0150
757-678-7875
FAX: 757-678-5070
www.upc-online.org
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