Australian Brush Turkey
Facts about this animal
The male has a large, bright yellow wattle while the female’s is smaller and paler. The colour of the featherless head and neck can be much brighter during courtship, but is generally much duller outside breeding season, when the wattle shrinks. The iris is pale brown to yellow or cream. Females are slightly smaller, and they have a very small neck pouch.
Brush turkeys are solitary in nature and aggressive to each other and to other lesser species. They do not form permanent pair bonds. A successful male, with a good nest location, mates with many different females during the breeding season. The Brush Turkey is one of Australia's three "mound builders". By scratching up earth and decaying leaf matter with their powerful legs the male Brush Turkey builds huge incubation mounds that generate heat through the decay of moist organic material. Typically a mound is one metre tall and 4-5 metres in diameter and is maintained for up to nine months by the male each nesting season. The mounds are re-used every year with the dominant male maintaining the best locality.
Did you know?
that the megapode chicks, to which the Australian brush turkey belongs, are the most precocial in the bird world? It escapes from its egg by means of a sharp kick, rather than gradually pecking its way out, like other birds. It then works its way up through the soil, sticks and leaves to emerge on the surface of the mound. It is already all but fully feathered, and almost at once it is capable of flying, feeding itself, and regulating its own temperature. It receives no attention or assistance whatsoever from the adults.
|Name (Scientific)||Alectura lathami|
|Name (English)||Australian Brush Turkey|
|Name (French)||Talégalle de Latham|
|Name (German)||Talegalla, Buschhuhn|
|Name (Spanish)||Talégalo cabecirrojo|
|CITES Status||Not listed|
|CMS Status||Not listed|
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|Habitat||Rainforest and forest, but also in scrubland, recently expanding into suburban areas, where it can come into conflict with human population as it sometimes damages gardens.|
|Wild population||Not threatened. Common in areas of good habitat, but numbers have declined in several areas.|
|Zoo population||38 reported to ISIS (2007)|
In the Zoo
How this animal should be transported
For air transport, Container Note 16 of the IATA Live Animals Regulations should be followed.
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Why do zoos keep this animal
The Australian Brush Turkey is not a threatened species. Zoos keep it for educational reasons because of its unusual reproductive behaviour (building by the male of an incubator mound). Brush turkeys are also suitable animals for walk-thru exhibits allowing for bar-free encounters.