Wild turkeys have some flashy headgear. The features of a turkey head are as funny sounding as they are funny looking. There are wart-like caruncles, flabby wattles, and — perhaps the king of turkey anatomy weirdness — the droopy, noodle-like snood.
This dangling face flesh may look like Mother Nature’s idea of a practical joke, but it is actually packed with purpose. From helping a gobbler land the ladies to intimidating his rivals, the turkey snood is a fascinating adaptation. So, why do turkeys have snoods? Let’s break down the science behind one of the wild turkey’s fanciest features.
What Is a Turkey Snood?
A snood is a fleshy, ribbon-like appendage made of skin and erectile tissue that projects from the forehead and dangles down over a turkey’s beak. Erectile tissue expands and contracts based on muscular action. When a turkey feels stressed or threatened, the snood shrinks and tightens. Both hens and toms have snoods. However, the snood on a hen or young jake may be little more than a short, horn-like bump. Mature males grow long, glorious, pendulous snoods.
Why is it called a “snood?” The word is probably derived from the Old English “snod,” meaning “hair ribbon.” The origin seems to make sense since mature toms have long, flowing snoods.
The Science Behind the Snood
In the human world, some females may pick a partner based on the size of his truck tires, biceps, or bank account. Size also matters to female turkeys. Research indicates that hens are totally checking out the snoods on the gobblers who are vying for their attention. While male turkeys pull out all the stops when it comes to turning a hen’s head — by puffing chests, fanning feathers, and dragging wings — it usually comes down to snood length in the end. It can only take a few millimeters more snood to win over a hen.
Richard Buchholz, a professor of biology at the University of Mississippi, theorizes that the size of a gobbler’s snood serves as an indication of good genetics. Since turkeys can’t ask the typical first-date questions to field out the losers, hens have to rely on something else. And snood size is the quickest, easiest way for a hen to gauge whether the gobbler strutting his stuff in front of her is a good genetic candidate for her future poults.
“Because male wild turkeys provide no care for the female or her offspring, the only resource she gets from him are the genes that he provides,” Buchholz tells Outdoor Life. “Thus females should be choosy and try to find a way to tell which males have good genes so that their offspring have the best genetic start in life, theoretically resulting in greater poult survival.Longer snooded males are typically older males. They have proven their ability to survive and thus would be carrying proven good genes for survival compared to younger males who had not yet been subjected to all of life’s challenges.”
In his research, Buchholz also discovered that toms with head-turning snoods had fewer parasites than males with less impressive ones.
“I’ve shown that the variation in snood length within an age group is correlated with parasite load (specifically, intestinal protozoan parasites called coccidia),” Buchholz says. “Gobblers with fewer coccidia grow longer snoods.”
Since hens can’t catch coccidia through mating, Buchholz believes their preference for toms with killer snoods isn’t related to avoiding parasites. Instead, he thinks long, lanky, pendulous snoods are an advertisement of good genes.
“I have shown that the immune genes of longer-snooded males are different from those of shorter-snooded males in captive-raised wild turkeys,” Buchholz says. “So maybe the good genes in long-snooded males represent more efficient and effective control of parasites, allowing males to spend resources on other things like hormones or calories needed to grow a snood.”
Snood size also plays a role in male-on-male competition. Wild turkeys have a wildly competitive social system, with combat and other dominance displays laying the groundwork for pecking order. By observing the behavior of wild turkeys around snooded decoys, Buchholz also discovered that males use snood length to size up their competitors.
“I have shown that wild turkeys are more likely to approach and threaten a decoy with a shorter snood than the attacker.”
Can You Read A Turkey’s Mood By Looking at Its Snood?
Some turkey hunters swear they can check a gobbler’s temperature by watching its snood. They claim changes in snood color and length are telltale ways to read a turkey’s mood. While Buchholz points out that “mood” isn’t a term biologists use, and there have been no studies on the “context and meaning of color changes of the bare head structures of wild turkeys,” snoods seem to respond to social contexts in the turkey world.
“Certainly, the gobblers can retract and extend their snood’s length, mostly by muscular contraction/relaxation,” Buchholz says. “When extended for a long period of time, the snood may also accumulate fluid and get a bit thicker.”
Typically gobblers will expand their snoods when they are courting hens. It’s part of that elaborate springtime display that turns turkey hunters into addicts. Both hens and toms relax their snoods when they end up in a tussle.
“I’ve seen males peck at the snood of another male, even tug on it, during a fight,” Buchholz says, though he notes that’s not common.
Turkeys will shorten their snoods if they hear an alarm call warning that there’s a predator. They can also retract their snoods so that they point almost straight up when foraging, which helps keep them out of the way.
Read Next: Why Do Turkeys Gobble at Owls?
Reading a snood isn’t foolproof. Still, paying attention to snood changes in a gobbler you’re working could help you predict its next move. If it’s coming in with a long snood flopping over its beak, you have a laid-back bird on your hands. If that snood suddenly shortens, your gobbler has gone from relaxed to alert, and the jig might be up.
Final Thoughts on Turkey Snoods
We may think a fat, floppy snood makes a gobbler look goofy, but hens don’t think so. Turkey snoods signal dominance to both hens and gobblers alike. And since turkey hunters like to chase dominant birds, the snood may actually be a better indicator of that than spurs or beard length.
“On a dead bird, the hunter could pull the snood to its full stretched length and measure it from the base to the tip with a ruler, to see for themselves how snood length relates to beard length and spur length,” Buchholz says. “But, for obvious reasons, some hunters would feel uncomfortable doing that.”