About This Project

On March 2nd, @TheReal_JDavis took a video of turkeys in his neighborhood circling a dead cat. He received thousands of tweets in response to this video speculating the turkeys are exhibiting this behavior. The short answer is, we don't currently know why. In this study we will first attempt to reproduce the behavior with a dead cat and a group of turkeys. If there is more interest from the public, will test additional hypotheses.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

The Internet has a lot of hypotheses as to why these two dozen or so turkeys are circling this dead cat. Some of the hypotheses can be tested, some cannot. Boston Magazine interviewed Dr. David Scarpitti and they claim that he said this may be happening because "turkeys are naturally fearful of cats, which can be a thread to younger, smaller birds." One hypothesis is that the turkeys cam across a dead cat in the road and were very curious to see whether it was alive, which resulted in the circling behavior. However, that still doesn't explain why.

We know that turkeys tend to follow a leader or two when they roam around suburban areas to search for food.

**Unfinished**

What is the significance of this project?

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What are the goals of the project?

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