Guest Author - Malika Harricharan

Will you be having turkey for Thanksgiving? You aren't alone - 97 percent of Americans have Turkey for Thanksgiving. Here are some fun facts to share with your family during the celebration!

* A male turkey is a tom. A female is a hen. Babies are called poults.

* Ben Franklin liked the Turkey so much he thought it should be the official bird of the US.

* A hen lays around 115 eggs a month which take about 28 days to hatch.

* A mature turkey has 3,500 feathers. Turkey feather were used by Native Americans to stabilize arrows.

* The largest turkey on record was 86 pounds.

* Wild turkeys can run 20 miles per hour and fly 55 miles per hour.

* Only the tom turkey gobbles. The hen makes clucking noises. A tom's gobble can be heard a mile away.

* A group of turkeys is called a flock.

* Turkeys have lived in North America for 10 million years. Forty-Five million are eaten at Thanksgiving.

* At the first harvest celebration with the pilgrims and Native Americans, "fowl" was eaten. While this might have been turkey, it's more likely to have been geese and ducks.

* At current Thanksgiving feasts, over 675 million pounds of turkey are consumed.

* It is NOT the turkey that makes you sleepy after a Thanksgiving feast. Tryptophan can only make you sleepy if taken on an empty stomach without protein - hardly the case on Thanksgiving! It's the carbohydrates in the other foods we eat with our meal that make us sleepy - neither of which are traditional from the original pilgrim's diet.



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