Gratitude for all of you on Canadian Thanksgiving

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This is Thanksgiving weekend in Canada. Thanksgiving is essentially a harvest festival, and in Canada, it falls on the second Monday in October.

Thanksgiving is not just about eating turkey and pumpkin pie; it’s also a wonderful opportunity for “giving thanks”. It’s a time to pause and express gratitude for various things in your life.

Here on the iNat Forum, let’s say thank you to everyone involved with the iNaturalist community!

Thank you to the hard-working identifiers who treat this like a full-time job, and make this platform function for everyone.

Thank you to the users who file a bug report for every edge case. Your feedback makes the platform better for everyone!

Thank you to the philosophers who ask questions about the ethics of various nature-related topics.

Thank you to the iNaturalist staff, who constantly work behind the scenes to make the platform better.

Thank you to the brilliant commenters who teach us things about the evolution of air breathing and other arcane topics.

Thank you to the commenters who share nature-related memes and other amusing posts.

Thank you to the volunteer moderators who ensure that the iNat Forum is a welcoming and constructive place for everyone.

Thank you to the volunteer curators who constantly update the whirlwind of changing taxonomy.

Thank you to the brave souls who venture onto the iNat Forum for the first time, because they feel so strongly about an issue that they need to tell the iNat world.

Thank you to the enthusiastic beginners who accidentally stumble onto the forum looking for an ID.

Thank you to the “computer folks” who create various tools and trouble-shoot technical issues.

Thank you to the long-time users who campaign for observers to make more IDs, campaign for better annotations, etc.

Wishing everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!

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It’s also for iNatting said turkeys and pumpkins!

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thankful for the lack of emojis in this post /jk (mostly)

thanks to all groups outlined in above post :)

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Great point — both organisms are native to the Americas!

Re: iNatting turkeys, wild turkeys are a relatively common sight in North America:

The population of wild turkeys in the USA reached a low of 30,000 by the late 1930s . . . “trap and transfer” projects have been very successful . . . current estimates place the wild turkey population at 7 million.

This could be a pumpkin (genus Curcubita) appreciation thread!

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Well, I don’t know what the traditional Canadian Thanskgiving dinner comprises, but if we iNatted an American Thanksgiving dinner, we would find:

Meleagris gallopavo

Vaccinium oxycoccos

Ipomoea batatas

Zea mays

Triticum aestivum

…and a whole lot more if you count the seasonings and stuffing ingredients. How often do we think about how biodiverse our meals are?

Then comes dessert. So many kinds of pies!

Cucurbita pepo or C. maxima

Carya illinoiensis

Malus domesticus

…and all the spices as seasonings. And let’s not forget Saccharum officinarum to make them sweet.

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Speaking of turkeys, I can’t find a clear answer on whether turkeys are native to Manitoba and were reintroduced in 1958 after being extirpated, or if turkeys never lived in the province before the 1958 introduction. iNaturalist does not list them as introduced here.

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A very happy Thanksgiving to you!

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The googles indicate they are not native but were introduced in the 1950s.

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@jasonhernandez74 That’s a great point. Here’s just stuffing alone (how I make it):

  • Salvia rosmarinus
  • Salvia officinalis
  • Thymus vulgaris
  • Daucus carota
  • Allium cepa, variety aggregatum
  • Gallus gallus domesticus (rather than Meleagris gallopavo).

Then the stuffing mix I use is primarily made of:

  • Oryza sativa
  • Starches from Solanum tuberosum & Manihot esculenta.

To that end, I am very thankful for the many different plants that add flavor to food or can be used as flours. And especially fact that the iNat forum is here to have discussions like this!

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How about Castanea satvia?

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Thanksgiving dinner, whether US or Canada, would seem to be one of the most biodiverse of the year.

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I like that we naturalists have steered this topic away from thankfulness to the biodiversity of Thanksgiving dinner, complete with scientific names.

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It’s reminding me of an old forum topic: Taxonomy for breakfast

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Well, on that note, the spices for the pumkin pie:

Cinnamomum verum (if you use the premium kind) or C. cassia (if you’re a cheapskate like me)
Myristica fragrans
Zingiber officinale
Syzygium aromaticum

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The counterargument seems to be presented in the CornellLab Birds of the World’s entry for Meleagris gallopavo, which only subscribers can read. Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Manitoba cites this as its sources for turkeys being a “re-introduction after extirpation”.

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Hey science teachers! Wouldn’t this make a fun holiday assignment? Identify all the species represented at a holiday meal.

Oops. No. It would make things very uncomfortable for all those who’s families cannot afford a lot of nutrient diversity. Or any nutrition at all, in a growing number of cases.

I was watching a show set in 1950s Britain today and at one point, a woman explained to her husband that because of the beef shortage, she was serving whale for dinner. It made me think how human economics and evolution are so often at odds with each other.

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Thanks for this comment, Robert. I just learned that:

  • There was a beef shortage in post WW2 Britain, for various reasons related to the war
  • They used whale meat as a substitute for beef
  • In the early 1950s, Britain maintained a whaling fleet, mostly in the Antarctic, where they targeted Blue Whale Balaenoptera musculus, Fin Whale Balaenoptera physalus, Sei Whale Balaenoptera borealis, Humpback Whale Megaptera novaeangliae, Sperm Whale Physeter macrocephalus, Minke Whale Balaenoptera acutorostrata, and Southern Right Whale Eubalaena australis
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I’ve also heard that it was a major marketing campaign of the US military to convince the post-war Japanese to start eating whale meat, which up until then had been a dietary inclusion of a very small, remote groups of indigenous peoples there.

If I recall the details correctly, this effort included live cooking demonstrations, a fisher retraining program, and the donation of large ships converted from the military supply.

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I sure do. :money_mouth_face:

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Which could be true. I personally don’t know. Sounds like an interesting project to dig into the history of turkey hunting and reintroduction in Canada and find out which story is the truth.

For what it’s worth, wild turkey is apparently introduced but not native to North Dakota or Montana in the US.

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