Chatting on e-mail with a nice woman who works at a charity for endangered livestock breeds. She sent me photos of turkeys. I could not resist doodling one—those heads! Like something out of Lovecraft! Good lord!
Sketch of a Royal Palm Turkey, from ref by Jeannette Beranger
Seriously, there is a kind of glorious elemental hideousness to a wattled-out tom turkey head. They’re spectacular. I want to woogle them.
Originally published at Tea with the Squash God. You can comment here or there.
Who needs aliens?
We have interesting enough things on our own planet!
Woogle? I'm almost afraid to ask...
It is my understanding that woogling turkeys is illegal in 42 out of the 50 states.
Edited at 2011-11-10 01:05 am (UTC)
Oh, well.
~Jessica
Mind you, I don't want to meet a veloci-turkey.
He is eldritch and arcane, though not exactly Non-Euclidean.
MA
Now, think about all the saurischian critters that we presently lack, what with the dent in the Yucatan and diverse lamentable ecological side effects, and consider that they were probably way seriously into this kind of visual signaling for fitness.
So, you know, on the long list of "not especially unlikely but they just won't die in lagerstätten" you can find "sauropod wattles".