Meleagris Skull Replica or Turkey skull measures 4.3 inches. The Turkey Skull Replica is museum quality polyurethane resins made in USA. 2-part skull (separate cranium and jaw).
The Meleagris or Turkey is a large bird in the genus Meleagris, native to North America.
The wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) of eastern and central North America can be found in the forests of North America, from Mexico (where they were first domesticated in Mesoamerica) throughout the midwestern and eastern United States and into southeastern Canada.
Meleagris or male Turkey’s have a distinctive fleshy wattle, called a snood, that hangs from the top of the beak.
In anatomical terms, a snood is an erectile, fleshy protuberance on the forehead of turkeys. Most of the time when the turkey is in a relaxed state, the snood is pale and 2 to 3 cm long.
When the Meleagris or male Turkey begins strutting (the courtship display), the snood engorges with blood, becomes redder and elongates several centimeters, hanging well below the beak.
Snoods are just one of the caruncles (small, fleshy excrescences) that can be found on turkeys.
While fighting, commercial turkeys often peck and pull at the snood, causing damage and bleeding. This often leads to further injurious pecking by other turkeys and sometimes results in cannibalism. To prevent this, some farmers cut off the snood when the chick is young, a process known as “de-snooding”.
The snood functions in both intersexual and intrasexual selection. Captive female wild turkeys prefer to mate with long-snooded males, and during dyadic interactions, male turkeys defer to males with relatively longer snoods.
These results were demonstrated using both live males and controlled artificial models of males.
Data on the parasite burdens of free-living wild turkeys revealed a negative correlation between snood length and infection with intestinal coccidia, deleterious protozoan parasites.
This indicates that in the wild, the long-snooded males are preferred by females and avoided by males seemed to be resistant to coccidial infection.
Scientists also conducted a study on 500 Meleagris or male Turkeys gathering data on their snood lengths and blood samples for immune system functionality.
They discovered a similar negative correlation. The presence of more red blood cells when the snood is not removed will help to fight off unwanted invaders in their immune system.
They are among the largest birds in their ranges. As with many large ground-feeding birds (order Galliformes), the male is bigger and much more colorful than the female.
Native to North America, the wild species was bred as domesticated turkey by indigenous peoples. It was this domesticated turkey that later reached Eurasia, during the Columbian exchange.
