You know that weird, floppy bit of skin that hangs off the face of a male turkey? That's called a snood, and it's used to impress lady turkeys. In a process that should sound at least somewhat familiar, the snood fills with blood, growing in size, and turning rather red. This animation, based on CT scans, shows how the snood is connected to the blood vessels that allow it to engorge. (Even though using the word "engorge" that makes the turkey sound like a character in a really bad romance novel.) Thanks to Ohio University's Witmer Lab for the animation!
There's lots more Thanksgiving-related science where that came from. Some of my favorite links (so far) are below. If you've seen something cool that I missed, let me know in the comments and I'll add it in. The goal: Enough holiday-themed nerdy joy to get us all through the long waits at the airport, multi-state car rides, awkward family get-togethers, and post-dinner partial comas. Let us all give thanks for science!
•The Genetics of White Meat and Dark Meat from Scientific American (Thanks, Erin Biba!)
•Tyrannosaurus Rex Had a Wishbone from Smithsonian's Dinosaur Tracking blog
•Why Arsenic is Used in Turkey Processing, and Why It's Not Worth the Risk, an LA Times essay by Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook
•A Genetically Modified Thanksgiving from Popular Science
•The Genetic Origins of Snood Erections from The Annals of Improbable Resarch
•A 3-Dimensional Cosehedron-Shaped Pecan Pie, and other Thanksgiving DIY projects from Popular Mechanics
&bull:Full Text of a 1969 Study On Frozen Turkey Semen and its Ability to Successfully Impregnate Female Turkeys (Thanks to Michael R. Shaughnessy!)
•It's Not Actually the Tryptophan Making You Sleepy and other turkey facts from mental_floss' Matt Soniak
•How to Turn Leftover Turkey Fryer Oil into Biodiesel, a post-dinner recipe from Planet Green
•A Whole Episode of the Science Jim Show dedicated to Thanksgiving, turkeys and Benjamin Franklin
More to come!
And, if your holiday plans put you in Washington D.C., remember, the Smithsonian museums are open tomorrow!
Here’s a post that we’ve done entitled
working hard towards Thanksgiving weekend which is right up the ally for bench scientists. Enjoy!
As somebody who used to live in DC (and being somebody completely uninterested in football), going to the Air & Space museum on Thanksgiving was a tradition of mine — it’s particularly interesting from a people watching perspective because nearly everybody who goes on that day are foreign tourists — French and German seem to be spoken then more than English!
No WAY! I remember this weird, spongy, oblong, bun-like object my sisters used to wrap their hair around to make some sort of hairdo (chignon?) or other. They told me it was called a snood, but I always thought they were giving me the gears. I now know better, and why – Sorry, girls!
Interesting. When guys wear a Bunny Suit, they have to wear a ‘snood’ to cover their beards/mustache.
Maggie, change the text from “allow it to engorge” to “allow it to become turgid”, and we’re sliding towards R-rated material, methinks. “Tumescent” works even better.
We had a turkey story in our magazine last year. Here’s the blurb and link:
Talking Turkey: As you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, you might like to know that turkey farming in North America has been around a lot longer than you thought. New genetic tools applied to a common turkey byproduct have given turkey aficionados a lot more to think about. by Cherie Winner
http://wsm.wsu.edu/s/index.php?id=746
(I also put up a couple of turkey galleries, one of heritage turkeys and the other of cool turkey feathers:
http://wsm.wsu.edu/gallery/2009Winter-gallery.php#num=0&id=heritage-turkeys
http://wsm.wsu.edu/gallery/2009Winter-gallery.php#id=turkey-feathers&num=0
Happy Thanksgiving!
What the heck is a “3-Dimensional Cosehedron”? The slide-show creator at PM made this mistake and BB perpetuated it. The original article calls it a “Pie-cosahedron” which is a deft enough pun on icosahedron, but the current version of the phrase is sloppy and meaningless.