They’re not pretty to look at either in either sex (very scaly and reptilian), but male turkeys have a special claw, known as a spur, part way down the back of the leg, just a couple inches above the feet. If the facial features aren’t enough for you to tell a hen from a tom, look at the legs. Female turkeys also have caruncles, but all three are smaller and remain a less noticeable fleshy pink color. When male turkeys are aroused, the caruncles around the head and neck turn bright red, while those on the face turn a brilliant aquamarine blue. Although if you thought they were testicle-like, you wouldn’t be far off, as the larger the caruncles, the more testosterone a tom has. These look like brains or intestines, depending on your preferred adjective. The bulbous hunks of tissue behind the dewlap are called the major caruncles. If you look closely at the caruncles around the skull, you’ll see a pea-sized orifice behind each eye, which are the turkey’s ears. Technically, wattles and snoods are types of caruncles, but on turkeys the term usually refers to all the flesh that is not a wattle or a snood. The warty protuberances on the head of a turkey are called caruncles. Chickens have a pair of wattles dangling from their neck, while turkeys have a single, much larger wattle, which is also known as a dewlap. Just like the snood, wattles become engorged with blood and turn bright red during courtship, as well as to intimidate other males. With poultry, wattles are bare flesh, and are considered a sign of male vitality – dominant roosters and toms typically have the largest wattles in the flock.
With pigs and goats, the wattle is covered in hair and has no known biological function. Pigs, goats, chickens, and turkeys are all capable of growing wattles. In the most general sense, wattles refer to fleshy appendages hanging from the neck or chin of many types of animals. For example, one study found that male turkeys with longer snoods have higher testosterone levels and are more resistant to coccidiosis, a common digestive ailment in poultry. For reasons that remain unclear, snood length appears to be an indicator of robust genes in turkeys. The males with the longest, brightest snoods tend to attract the most mates. While mature female turkeys develop a short snood of their own (evolutionary purpose unknown), on males it eventually grows up to 5 inches when a male is trying to impress a female, the snood turns bright red and elongates even further. While it looks like a pint-sized version of an elephant’s trunk, the purpose of the snood is not to grab food, it’s to grab the attention of a mate. This is the fleshy appendage that extends over the beak. Here’s a few cliff notes on the topic to pull out at your next dinner party (maybe just not at the Thanksgiving table). It was when a farmer gave me a quick tutorial on all those dangly head appendages and the many physical differences than differentiate hens (females) from toms (males) that I really started to grasp the world of turkeys – especially their social life. One of the most interesting parts of writing about turkeys for our winter cover story was learning about their anatomy.