On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of turkey burger recipe oven page across from the article title. This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 23 December 2022. This article is about all species of turkey. For its meat, see Turkey as food.

The turkey is a large bird in the genus Meleagris, native to North America. 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. The earliest turkeys evolved in North America over 20 million years ago. They share a recent common ancestor with grouse, pheasants, and other fowl.

The wild turkey species is the ancestor of the domestic turkey, which was domesticated approximately 2,000 years ago. The genus Meleagris was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. Wild turkey Point Pelee NP 2014. The linguist Mario Pei proposes two possible explanations for the name turkey.

A second theory arises from turkeys coming to England not directly from the Americas, but via merchant ships from the Middle East, where they were domesticated successfully. In 1550, the English navigator William Strickland, who had introduced the turkey into England, was granted a coat of arms including a “turkey-cock in his pride proper”. These are thought to arise from the supposed belief of Christopher Columbus that he had reached India rather than the Americas on his voyage. An infant turkey is called a chick or poult.

Turkeys were likely first domesticated in Pre-Columbian Mexico, where they held a cultural and symbolic importance. Mayan aristocrats and priests appear to have had a special connection to ocellated turkeys, with ideograms of those birds appearing in Mayan manuscripts. Tenochtitlán, noting there were tamales made of turkeys, iguanas, chocolate, vegetables, fruits and more. Turkeys were first exported to Europe via Spain around 1519, where they gained immediate popularity among the aristocratic classes. Turkeys arrived in England in 1541.