Turkeys - Not The Brightest Bulb in the Box

I love turkeys, really I do. They are fascinating creatures and exhibit a good amount of intelligence for foraging, hunting, raising young, nesting, all the essentials of life. There is just one area that turkeys don't seem to understand at all... Fences.  Generation after generation of turkeys shows this same blind spot of intelligence.  Take a Look at this picture:

You will notice, this is NOT a complete pen. the back side is totally wide open.  Even so, the front edge of the fence panels shows that these girls have spent all night and all day walking slowly back and forth, attempting to find an opening. Not to mention that the fencing is only 2 feet tall, and they could at any moment hop right over.  

But no, turkeys don't understand fences at all. not over, not around, nothing except an apparent desire to blast their way through the largest opening they can find.. even if they don't find it for DAYS.  It is entirely possible that these girls could, without help, starve to death or die of thirst, only feet away from food and water, because they don't realize they could go around nor hop over.

Here's a short video of the girls pacing back and forth, patiently waiting for a hole to appear in the fence they have walked past hundreds of times.

Do not worry, after the video, we showed them how to escape the fence :)