Around the world, turkeys have become synonymous with American Thanksgiving. Just to the north, a third of all the turkey sold in Canada are purchased for Canadian Thanksgiving (which is in October). Turkeys are, after all, a North American bird. But there’s much more to turkeys than just their place on many dinner tables or their role in the annual presidential pardon ceremony. When it comes to sex, mating, and reproduction, turkeys are fascinating — and surprisingly queer — animals.
The sexual behavior of male turkeys truly runs the gamut to a degree not often seen in nature. Some males are basically indiscriminate sex machines who will try to mate with anything, whether it’s turkey hens, inanimate objects, human handlers, or even, as some creepy and macabre experiments in the 1960s found, the taxidermied heads of dead turkeys on a stick. On the radically opposite end of the spectrum, other male turkeys become literal wingmen and best bros for life, forming close, lifelong bonds with male siblings and foregoing mating in order to help their brothers score.
Female turkeys are where things get really interesting. Same-sex behavior has been documented in over 500 species of birds, and in the case of turkeys, it’s mostly the females who account for the bisexual activity. Research stretching back as far as the early 1940s found that, as one researcher put it, “Homosexual behavior, masturbation, interspecific mating reactions, and other partially adaptive forms of sexual behavior are commonplace in a barnyard.” Studies on turkey hens found that some females exhibited masculine mating patterns, taking on the male role of courting females and mounting them. As a study from 1955 found, these female-female mountings were “frequently observed to carry the mating far enough to induce ‘orgasm’ in the other female.” This behavior was seen as “defective” since these sexually satisfied females were then less likely to mate with males.
Similarly, scientists in the 20th century found that female turkeys could be induced to strut, gobble, and mount both males and females if administered male hormones. As the 1969 science text The Behaviour of Domestic Animals put it, “Such individuals may crouch sexually and, after being mated by a male, get up, court other females with struts, mount crouching hens, and in some instances carry copulatory movements to the point of providing adequate stimulation to terminate the receptivity of the other hen.” In plain language, these hens weren’t left wanting for more.
Oh, and did I mention that female turkeys are also capable of parthenogenesis, also known as asexual reproduction and virgin birth? They’re one of the very few vertebrate animals with this ability. It’s a rare occurrence, and the offspring born of this remarkable process have far more health problems than ordinary turkeys, but it goes to show that these birds are capable of miraculous feats.
Turkeys are one of over 500 bird species that have been observed engaging in bi behavior. From domesticated birds to wild, migratory birds to flightless penguins, our feathered friends display nothing if not an incredible example of queerness in the natural world.