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THE BIG QUESTION:

WHERE WAS THE TURKEY?

Thursday, November 25, 2021

In this newsletter, the first Thanksgiving feast; a dog that’s ‘selling’ a mansion; a blossoming of wildlife in the Thames River; saving coral … and to our U.S. readers, Happy Thanksgiving!

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALGIRDAS GRIGAITIS, ALAMY

By Rachael Bale, ANIMALS Executive Editor

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays, and that’s because good food is one of my favorite things. I love the classics: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top, and yes—green bean casserole. (One year my mom tried to skip the green bean casserole, so I drove down to the grocery store on Thanksgiving morning to pick up the ingredients for her. I would have made it myself, but my mom refuses to let anyone else in the kitchen on Thanksgiving.)

It turns out those aren’t the “classics” after all. Four centuries ago, when the Pilgrims and Wampanoags sat down at what later became known as the first Thanksgiving, New England’s woods were filled with game, and its waters teemed with fish. They likely feasted on venison, oysters, cod, ducks, and eels—which the Wampanoags taught the Pilgrims how to bait (with lobster meat!) and stomp out of the mud.

Today, much of that native wildlife no longer lands on our tables every fourth Thursday in November—we’ve overhunted and overfished much of it, Brian Handwerk writes. Some have disappeared entirely, like the passenger pigeon. Others have rebounded, like the wild turkey (pictured at top; just above, giant American lobsters.)

Today, I want to give thanks for the native wildlife we do have left, and for animals who have made 400 years of Thanksgiving feasts possible.

(Editor’s note: Need more thanks? Here’s Rachael’s 2020 essay on the animals that have enriched her life. And here’s her look from 2019 at how America’s wild turkeys were saved. Want unlimited digital access to Nat Geo’s animal and wildlife stories and images? Subscribe here.)

PHOTO OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY @GREG.LECOEUR

Weird word, colorful creatures: The word is nudibranch (NEW-dih-bronk), a group of soft-bodied marine mollusks that shed their shells after their larval stage. Pictured above, a pilgrim hervia, which is a small and characteristically colorful nudibranch measuring between one to two inches that is very common in the Mediterranean. The sea slugs feed on hydroids and can preserve their stinging cells at the end of hornlike extensions, called cerata. That threat of stinging keeps many predators at bay.

MASTERS OF DISGUISE

TODAY IN A MINUTE

Talk to the dog: The Miami mansion once owned by Madonna is for sale, for $31.75 million. Its owner is a German Shepherd named Gunther VI. Or rather a $500 million trust left to a succession of dogs after the owner’s death in 1992. "He lives in Madonna's former master bedroom," real estate agent Ruthie Assouline tells the Associated Press. That is, when Gunther’s not at his main home in Tuscany.

A new day for a ‘dirty old river’: Dirty? That’s how the Kinks, in their greatest song, characterized the Thames. But now the river that bisects London is no longer "biologically dead"—and is now home to sharks, seals, and sea horses, the Washington Post reports.

Plague strikes Egypt: This time, they are “deathstalkers”—yellowish four-inch scorpions that emerged from desert burrows and skittered into villages around the southern city of Aswan. Hundreds of people have been stung, the New York Times reports.

Thanksgiving’s flip side: Just four months after that first Thanksgiving with Pilgrims and Native Americans, a tenuous truce collapsed in Virginia, leading to all-out war as the settlers eventually pushed out Indigenous people. The lesser-known aspect of American history is “far more reflective of the country’s origins—a story not of peaceful coexistence but of distrust, displacement and repression,” writes historian Peter C. Mancall.

IN A FEW WORDS

QUOTE

The only way you are going to know about [marine ecosystems] is if you learn about them, and the best way to learn about them is personally experiencing them and falling in love with them.

Salome Buglass

Marine Ecologist, Nat Geo Explorer

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS

Coral mystery: A silent killer has spread to corals off 20 nations so far, and it is the worst coral disease researchers have ever seen. In only seven years, it has spread throughout Florida and the Caribbean. Scientists are racing to understand and hopefully slow or stop it. Stony coral tissue loss disease afflicts at least 22 species, Nat Geo’s Douglas Main reports. (Pictured above at left, a colony of grooved brain coral in a lab near Tampa; at right, spiny flower coral, also susceptible.)

LAST GLIMPSE

ILLUSTRATION BY ARMANDO VEVE

After turkeys come … monkeys? The Norman Rockwell version of Thanksgiving has been dominated by turkeys, but other animals have more codified “days.” In fact, there seems to be a day (or three) marking nearly every animal, we discover. Coming up: Monkey Day, on December 14, and—wait for it— January 22’s National Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day. That day urges humans to try to see the world through cats’ eyes. Here are more “days”—and enjoy the rest of today. (The illustration above is sprinkled with animals that are honored with days. See how many you can spot.)

SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

This newsletter was curated and edited by David Beard, Monica Williams, Jen Tse, and Heather Kim. Do you have an idea or a link for the newsletter? Let us know at [email protected]. Have a good holiday.

PREVIOUSLY ON NAT GEO TODAY ...

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