If you’ve ever wondered how long turkeys have been strutting around this planet acting like they own the place, the answer is: a very long time. Wild turkeys have been roaming North America for millions of years, which means they’ve survived ice ages, predators, and – astonishingly – some of them have survived the invention of the deep fryer.

Turkeys are native to the Americas, which is why early European explorers took one look at these feathered drama queens and immediately decided to haul them back across the ocean. By the 1500s, they were gobbling their way through English barnyards, eventually ending up as the accidental mascots of Thanksgiving.

Fun fact: Ben Franklin jokingly said in a letter to his daughter that turkeys would make a better national bird than the bald eagle. He said that the eagles were of “bad moral character” and that turkeys were more respectable. America dodged a real branding crisis there.

But wait – there’s more to these birds than their holiday martyrdom.

For starters, wild turkeys can fly. Not elegantly, mind you, but enough to get themselves into trees and out of trouble. The domesticated ones you see waddling around farms, however, have been bred so large they couldn’t get airborne if you strapped them to a SpaceX booster.

Turkeys also blush. Their heads shift colors – red, blue, or white – depending on their mood. Basically, they’re the mood rings of the animal kingdom, except louder and more judgmental.

And here’s a nugget to drop at the family table: a male turkey’s gobble can be heard up to a mile away, which makes them the original loudmouths of the forest.

So this Thanksgiving, while you’re carving up the centerpiece, remember: turkeys aren’t just dinner. They’re prehistoric, high-drama, tree-flying, color-changing poultry royalty who’ve been ruling the roost long before Thanksgiving existed.