Turkeys
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50 free Turkeys trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Turkeys are far stranger than the holiday roast suggests. The wild bird is a wary, fast-moving forest dweller with a surprisingly complicated social life, and its comeback from near disappearance is one of the great wildlife recovery stories. This quiz covers turkeys as animals first: body parts with odd names, courtship displays, calls, diet, predators, the different wild populations and the lesser-known tropical species. It also follows the bird into human history, from ancient domestication and the journey to Europe to farm breeds, hunting traditions and the turkey's place in language and legend. It suits bird lovers, hunters, teachers planning a November lesson and anyone who wants facts to share at the holiday table. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Where do wild turkeys spend the night, since their vision is very poor after dark?
In trees
Wild turkeys roost in trees, flying up at twilight to get well off the ground, and in snowy regions they sit out blizzards in conifers.
Q 02Which Founding Father's letter to his daughter began the myth that he wanted a turkey as national bird?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin was really criticising the Society of the Cincinnati and the eagle on its crest. He never publicly proposed the turkey or opposed the bald eagle as a national symbol.
Q 03Which children's television show covers its eight-foot-tall star's costume in tail feathers taken from turkeys?
Sesame Street
Sesame Street dresses Big Bird in turkey tail feathers, and its makers are said to reject roughly 90 percent of the feathers picked for the costume.
Q 04After a huge conservation comeback, wild turkeys now live in every US state except which one?
Alaska
Alaska is the lone holdout, while even Hawaii has wild turkeys, released there in the late 1950s.
Q 05People in which present-day country first domesticated the turkey, centuries before Europeans ever saw one?
Mexico
Mexico is where turkeys were first tamed, prized for meat, eggs and feathers. The farmyard birds now eaten worldwide descend from that stock, carried across the Atlantic in the 1500s.
Q 06Which amino acid in turkey meat is wrongly blamed for the drowsiness that follows a big holiday dinner?
Tryptophan
Tryptophan is no more plentiful in turkey than in other table birds, so the bird is innocent. The carbohydrate-heavy dishes served alongside do more to bring on the after-dinner slump.
Q 07In which sport is a streak of three consecutive strikes by one player known as a turkey?
Bowling
Bowling calls three strikes in a row a turkey. Two in a row is a double, and four has been nicknamed a hambone.
Q 08Male wild turkeys sometimes attack parked cars after mistaking what on the shiny paintwork for a rival bird?
Their own reflection
Their own reflection looks like an intruder, so males peck and kick at cars and windows to defend territory. Wild turkeys are otherwise rarely aggressive unless cornered or harassed.
Q 09Female turkeys prefer males with a longer version of which fleshy flap that dangles over the beak?
Snood
Snood length signals health: long-snooded males carry fewer gut parasites, and rival males back down from them. The flap fills with blood and stretches well past the beak during courtship.
Q 10In which Charles Dickens story does a reformed miser buy a prize turkey for his clerk's family?
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol has Scrooge send the Cratchits a turkey, then still a luxury in Britain. Intensive farming from the late 1940s finally made the bird cheap enough for most families.
Q 11What is the proper name for a baby turkey, which can leave the nest within a day of hatching?
Poult
A poult hatches after about 28 days of incubation and is on its feet fast: the whole brood leaves the ground nest within 12 to 24 hours.
Q 12Which first name do Americans give an adult male turkey, the same one used for a male cat?
Tom
Tom is the usual American term, alongside gobbler, for a bird much larger than the female, with plumage that shines red, purple, green, copper and gold.
Q 13What are adult male turkeys called in the United Kingdom and Ireland, a name also given to antlered males?
Stags
Stags is the term in Britain and Ireland, where farmers from the 17th century onwards walked whole flocks to the London markets on foot.
Q 21The ocellated turkey, the only species besides the wild turkey, lives mainly on which peninsula?
Yucatán
Yucatán forests spread across three countries hold the entire species. Maya nobles and priests seem to have prized it, and the bird appears in their manuscripts.
Q 22The ocellated turkey is named for spots on its tail feathers that resemble what?
Eyes
Eyes seem to stare from every tail feather: each carries a bronze spot, or ocellus, finished with a bright gold tip.
Q 23The ocellated turkey has a bare head of which colour, studded with orange nodules?
Blue
Blue skin covers the head in both sexes, and in the breeding season males add a swollen, fleshy crown that brightens to yellow-orange.
Q 14In which season do male wild turkeys gobble most, announcing themselves to females and rival males?
Spring
Spring is gobbling season, and the call can carry up to a mile. Weather can quieten the birds, with air pressure, rain and temperature all blamed for silent mornings.
Q 15Turkeys first reached Europe around 1519 through which country, where aristocrats quickly took to them?
Spain
Spain received the first turkeys from the New World, and the birds were an immediate hit with the aristocracy. They had reached England by 1541.
Q 16The French word for turkey, dinde, is short for a phrase meaning 'chicken of' which country?
India
India lends its name to the bird in several languages: Norwegian, Swedish and Estonian call it after the port of Calicut, now Kozhikode.
Q 17Which African bird, traded to Europe through Turkey, was called a 'turkey cock' before the American bird was?
Guineafowl
Guineafowl were the original turkey cocks, and English colonists reused the name for the similar-looking American bird. The turkey's genus name, Meleagris, is also Greek for that African species.
Q 18Most farmed turkeys are bred to have feathers of which colour, so stray pin feathers barely show on the carcass?
White
White plumage hides leftover pin feathers on a dressed bird, which is why it displaced the wild-type bronze on commercial farms from the 1960s.
Q 19Which large reptile preys on wild turkeys of every age in the US Southeast when they stray too near water?
Alligator
Alligator attacks are one hazard among many: raccoons, skunks and opossums raid the ground nests, yet humans are now the leading predator of adult turkeys.
Q 20Hunters locate male turkeys by imitating which other bird, whose call shocks them into gobbling back?
Owl
Owl hoots trigger a 'shock gobble', a reflex reply to sudden loud noise that gives away a male's position. Thunder and even a train whistle can set it off too.
Q 24About one in ten female wild turkeys also grows which bristly chest tuft normally seen on males?
Beard
A beard is really a tuft of coarse, hair-like feathers sprouting from the centre of the breast, and it keeps growing throughout the bird's life.
Q 25Male wild turkeys spar with rivals and kick at predators using which sharp growths behind their lower legs?
Spurs
Spurs make a cornered male dangerous: by kicking, biting and ramming he may drive off predators as large as mid-sized mammals.
Q 26What name is given to a male turkey's courtship display of fanned tail, puffed feathers and dragging wings?
Strutting
Strutting comes with sound effects: gobbling, a low drumming and a sharp spit of air, all used to show dominance and to attract females.
Q 27Wild turkeys can fly about a quarter of a mile, but how do they usually escape an approaching predator?
Running
Running is the first choice for adults and chicks alike; flight is a short, fast last resort, usually kept close to the ground.
Q 28Among native North American birds, only which species reaches a higher maximum weight than the wild turkey?
Trumpeter swan
Trumpeter swan aside, nothing on the continent tops it, and the wild turkey is the heaviest of all the gamebirds, the order that includes chickens, quail and grouse.
Q 29Which muscular organ lets a toothless turkey grind up whole acorns, helped by swallowed grit?
Gizzard
The gizzard is a thick-walled second stomach found in every bird, and the grit held inside it does the work of teeth.
Q 30Which 1620 settlers brought farm turkeys from England, unaware that wild ones already filled the Massachusetts woods?
Pilgrims
The Pilgrims' birds had made a round trip: tamed in Mesoamerica, shipped to Europe, then carried back across the Atlantic as English farm stock.