CUĀUH-TŌTO-LI/CUĀUH-TŌTO-LIN, literally, “forest turkey,” Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) [FC: 29 Quauhtotoli] “It is like the domesticated turkey , though a little smoke-colored. The wing-bend is white…. It is a gobbler. The turkey cock [and] the turkey hen… They gobble, they cough….” This is likely the wild form of the domesticated Wild Turkey, which survives in out-of-the-way places to this day, independent of human actions. Martin del Campo suggested that this might be the Ocellated Turkey (Meleagris ocellata). However, that species is confined to the Yucatan peninsula.
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 11 – Earthly Things, no. 14, Part XII, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1963); Rafael Martín del Campo, “Ensayo de interpretación del Libro Undecimo de la Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún – 11 Las Aves (1),” Anales del Instituto de Biología Tomo XI, Núm. 1 (México, D.F., 1940); and, with quotation selections, synthesis, and analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.