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April 13, 2012
Q. What does a serious researcher do to really start “talking turkey”?
A. Ethologist Joe Hutto went to live with wild turkeys to experiment with the imprinting phenomenon, in which young animals become attached to the first moving object they encounter and adopt it as their “mother,” reported Jon White in New Scientist magazine. “Wild turkeys are hard to come by,” said Hutto, “so when I lucked upon some wild turkey eggs, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Once the imprinting occurred, though, Hutto realized this would be a 24-hour-a-day commitment: He had to be with the brood of poults before daylight so that when they flew down from the roost their “mother” was there waiting, and he had to remain until after dark or they'd try to follow him and be left on the ground, vulnerable to snakes and weasels.
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