There appears to be a good correlation of ocellated turkey spur length with age; the longer the spur, the older the turkey.
Category: FaunaFacts
FaunaFocus releases a new FaunaFact every single day! These bite-sized bits of information are interesting facts paired with a unique image of that animal.
Ocellated Turkey
The ocellated turkey is referred to as pavo and pavo ocelado by Central American locale, and its Mayan Indian name is ucutz il chican.
Ocellated Turkey
On rare occasions, female ocellated turkeys have been spotted with spurs.
Ocellated Turkey
An ocellated turkey's tail spots are similar to a peacock's, causing scientists to once believe it was more related to peafowl.
Ocellated Turkey
Legs of adult male ocellated turkeys have pronounced spurs that are longer and more attenuated than those of North American gobblers.
Ocellated Turkey
The ocellated turkey only exists in a 50,000 square mile area on the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, northern Belize, and the El Petén region of northern Guatemala.
Ocellated Turkey
The head of the male ocellated turkey has a fleshy blue crown adorned with yellow-orange nodules which enlarge during breeding season.
Ocellated Turkey
The spots on the ocellated turkey's tail helped give it its name, as the Latin word for "eye" is "oculus".
Ocellated Turkey
The ocellated turkey is the smallest species of turkey and is significantly smaller than any of the 5 subspecies of North American wild turkeys.
Ocellated Turkey
Very little research has been done on the ocellated turkey and less is known about it than any other turkey species or subspecies.
Ocellated Turkey
The ocellated turkey is one of only 2 species of turkey in the world, the other being the North American wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo).
Ocellated Turkey
It may be possible to age male ocellated turkeys based on the width of the rich copper band on their wings as adults of both sexes appear to have wider bands.
Ocellated Turkey
Leg lengths of the ocellated turkey differ between sexes as females have shorter legs than males.
Ocellated Turkey
Both sexes of ocellated turkeys have distinctive caruncle-like growths, called nodules, but they're more pronounced on males.
Aardwolf
The mandibular salivary glands of the aardwolf are twice the size of the glands of a similar-sized dog.
Aardwolf
Despite its relatedness to hyenas, the aardwolf is one of only 18 species that feeds exclusively on termites and is one of the few true mammalian myrmecophages.
Aardwolf
Aardwolves cannot be caught with food-baited traps, but may be lured with scent-marks of other aardwolves.
Aardwolf
The aardwolf has a black mane extending from head to tail which it erects when threatened to appear larger.
Aardwolf
Aardwolves are solitary foragers, except when accompanying their young cubs.
Aardwolf
Aardwolf cubs are raised in dens, often old aardvark, porcupine, or springhare burrows.
Aardwolf
The aardwolf is primarily nocturnal as its activity is determined by the activity of the termites it eats.
Aardwolf
Although aardwolves are socially monogamous and often live together in pairs, they're genetically polygynous and mating is not necessarily exclusive.
Aardwolf
A single aardwolf can consume as many as 300,000 termites in a single night and up to 105,000,000 within a year.
Aardwolf
Both sexes of the aardwolf scent-mark their territories, a behavior sometimes called pasting, though males paste more than females.
Aardwolf
The aardwolf is tolerant of the noxious secretions of the soldier termites it feeds on.
Aardwolf
Male aardwolves help in rearing the young by guarding the den against black-backed jackals.
Aardwolf
The aardwolf is considered one of the indicator species for the Somalia-Kalahari semidesert axis as its distribution is related to the area's ancient climatic history.
Aardwolf
The aardwolf's scientific name, Proteles cristata, orginates from Greek and Latin and refers to the five digits on its forepaws and its long, dorsal crest.
Aardwolf
The record lifespan for an aardwolf is 18 years 11 months.
Aardwolf
At 1-year old, when the next cubs have emerged from the den, young aardwolves have left their natal territory unless an aardwolf parent of the same sex has died.
Aardwolf
The aardwolf is also known as the civet hyena, gray jackal, and maanhaar jackal, (mane-jackal in Afrikaans), but its common name translates to earth-wolf in Afrikaans and Dutch.
Aardwolf
The use of the aardwolf's canines for fighting is clearly reflected in their wear, as in old animals they are broken down to rounded stumps.
Aardwolf
The black-backed jackal is the aardwolf's greatest natural enemy as the hyenas frequently have aggressive territorial disputes with the canines and chase them from their dens.