National Museum of Natural History

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How Leafcutter Ants and Other Culinary Creatures Prepare a Feast

Celebrate Thanksgiving with some of the animal kingdom’s greatest cooks, including marshmallow-roasting apes and salt-sprinkling monkeys

A group of seven squashes and an ear of corn on grass littered with fallen leaves.

How Ancient Humans Helped Bring Pumpkins to Your Thanksgiving Table

Fall’s favorite fruits have long been essential staples in human diet and culture

Although pumpkins and other gourds have become staples at Thanksgiving, they were not the only original crops in the Americas. Other crops domesticated around the same time, like sumpweed, little barley and goosefoot, are now gone from today’s palates. (Smithsonian)

Our Thanksgiving Menu Has Lost a Few Crops

Studying the domestication of any crop that people once ate helps scientists reveal how modern crops have evolved.

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