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The Domestic Turkey and the First Thanksgiving

10,000 Birds

The chance that this was a real Turkey are not great, and the chance that Columbus actually brought breeding stock from Honduras to Spain is not great, so maybe, maybe not. Thus, the cattle we raise for meat and dairy are sometimes called Bos taurus while the extinct wild form is always called Bos primigenius. Which would be weird.

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The Nonessential Whooping Crane

10,000 Birds

Another 170 are in captivity, many of them breeding stock for reintroduction efforts. This, of course, flies in the face of the entire reason for starting this project which was to make sure that the western population of Whooping Cranes was not lost to a single untoward event or catastrophe. Wicked, right? Hat-tip to Stella.

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