How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
A woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could
if a woodchuck could chuck wood!
That tongue twister originated in the refrain of the “Woodchuck Song,” which was written by Robert Hobart Davis and Theodore Morse and debuted in 1903 in the musical comedy “The Runaways.” The song was later sold to consumers as sheet music and recorded and sold on Edison wax cylinders, which were the predecessor to flat phonograph records, by Ragtime Bob Roberts.
The alliterative question and answer have little connection to the animal we know as the woodchuck. The animal was chosen for the little ditty because of its name, which originated as an interpretation by European colonists of the Algonquian word for the animal, “wuchak.”
Other names for the woodchuck include the equally familiar groundhog, which is the English translation of the Pennsylvania Dutch word “grundsau” and the name made famous by Groundhog Day; Marmota monax, which is the scientific name for the animal; chuck; wood-shock; groundpig; whistlepig; whistler; thickwood badger; Canada marmot; weenusk; and siffleux.
But none of those other names alliterate with wood, would or chuck.
Woodchucks really have little interest in wood.
They are herbivores and eat a variety of grasses, legumes, vegetables, grasses and fruits. Preferred foods include grasses, clover, alfalfa, soybeans, beans, peas, carrots, and apples and pears in the fall.
They eat about a third of their weight every day and can do a lot of damage in gardens, to residential landscapes and agricultural fields. Their consumption increases from late summer through fall in preparation for hibernation.
They also have been known to eat a small amount of insects, mostly unintentionally as insects on plants they eat.
As in all squirrels, groundhog teeth never stop growing, at a rate of about 1/16 of an inch per week. If the teeth are not worn down by chewing, a groundhog will eventually take on a sabertooth or snaggletooth appearance. There have been instances of groundhogs with excessive tooth growth piercing their own jaws and skulls with those teeth.
Although they are not eaters of trees and shrubs, they do sometimes show a temporary interest in trees. They are able climbers and will take to the trees to escape predators and to find food.
For their homes, groundhogs burrow in the soil. They are master diggers. The burrows they excavate for themselves and their offspring, when eventually vacated are often occupied by other animals, notably rabbits and red foxes.
In addition to raising their young, groundhogs use their burrows to escape predators and other threats, for sleeping and for hibernating. Burrows have been known to extend 66 feet throughout their tunnels and chambers, and as deep as 5 feet below the surface. In one study, researchers excavated a dozen dens and determined that an average of 384 pounds soil and stone had been dug off by each groundhog.
A burrow has 2-5 entrances and several chambers, including a nesting chamber for birthing and rearing babies, an excrement chamber and a hibernation chamber.
It’s not uncommon for a groundhog, particularly an older groundhog, to have more than one burrow, unconnected to its other burrows.
Groundhogs are consummate diggers by nature. They are nicely evolved for digging, with strong, curved claws on short, powerful front legs and spine curved like that of a mole rather than straight like other squirrels.
When young groundhogs are a few months old and preparing to leave their mother’s burrow, they will dig several holes close to that burrow. Many of those holes will be only a few feet deep and never used for anything other than for some apparent practice.
The groundhog’s burrow provided the basis for an attempt at estimating how much wood a woodchuck could chuck if the large rodent did actually chuck wood.
Wildlife Technician Richard Thomas, with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, in1988 calculated that digging a 25- to 30-foot burrow would mean moving about 700 pounds of dirt and stone. So, if a woodchuck focused that same energy on wood, it probably could move, or chuck, an equal amount of wood.
Another calculation, based on the idea that chucking might equate to eating, as in the opposite of upchucking, concluded that a groundhog could eat 22 cubic inches of wood per day. How the groundhog’s digestive system would handle all that material for which it was not designed was not addressed.
Regardless of the veracity of the concept, the question of a woodchuck chucking wood also has made it into Werner Herzog’s 1976 documentary, “How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck,” about the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship. The contest was held in New Holland, Lancaster County, the year Herzog filmed.
The concept of chucking wood also has shown up in business vocabulary.
According to the Urban Dictionary, “Wood chucking has nothing to do with what most people consider wood. Wood chucking is the well-known practice, used by average and bad sales representatives or lead generators, of submitting weak or outright false sales to management in a pathetic attempt to inflate their key metrics.”
Inflation of a sort also will be in play on Tuesday. Punxsutawney Phil and the other weather-forecasting groundhogs will be encouraged into artificially early emergence from their burrows on Groundhog Day.
Most groundhogs will remain in hibernation on Tuesday, but males will begin to show themselves later in February, when they begin their annual searches for mates. Even with snow still on the ground, they will travel – sometimes surprisingly long distances – throughout their range to inspect the dens of females to see if they are still occupied and to locate other males that might be encroaching on their territory.
The males then return to their own dens for a few more weeks of sleep, before emerging for the season in early March, when the females also emerge for mating.
Despite the stuttered emergence of the males in February and March, groundhogs are true hibernators. Off and on from late fall to early spring they will enter torpor, with body temperature reduced from 99 degrees to about 38 degrees, heart rate reduced from 80 beats per minute to 5 and breathing reduced from 16 breaths per minute to as little as 2.
But groundhog hibernation is not one continuous period of deep sleep. They intersperse those periods of torpor with a few days of wakefulness in the burrow.
The groundhog is part of a group of large ground squirrels known as marmots within the family Sciuridae (squirrels). The entire squirrel family lies within the order Rodentia (rodents)
The groundhog is the largest member of the squirrel family within its range, which includes all of eastern North America, north of the Gulf Coast states and south of the Arctic Circle, and west through Canada into Alaska.
Adult groundhogs average 26 inches in length and 9-15 pounds in weight but can reach lengths of 20 inches and weights of more than 30 pounds in areas of abundant food, particularly alfalfa.
Being a creature of open spaces with abundant grass and other herbaceous plants, the groundhog population has increased massively since the arrival of European settlers and their clearing of the forests.
Farmlands, reverting farmlands, parks and grass-lined roadways are particularly conducive to large populations of groundhogs.
One would expect those populations to be riddled with groundhog ticks (Ixodes cookie), which do show a decided preference for groundhogs, but also are found on small mammals, birds, pets and humans.
In Pennsylvania, the species is less common than three other tick species: American dog tick (Dermacentor variablis), deer tick or black-legged tick (Ixodes scapularis) and Lone star tick (Amblyomma Americanum).
Although groundhogs are prey for bears, wolves, coyotes, foxes, dogs, lynx, bobcats, eagles, great horned owls and others, and are hunted heavily by humans, the species’ reproductive capacities generally compensate for those losses. A female produces one litter of 2-6 babies each year, usually starting in her second year, and gets most of them to young adulthood by raising them in the protection of an underground burrow.
Groundhogs have been used in medical research on hepatitis B-induced liver cancer. The animals do not pass hepatitis onto humans, but they do react to the human hepatitis virus similarly to human reactions to it.
Although there are records of groundhogs living more than 20 years in captivity, the average age in the wild is 3-6 years.
Despite that potential longevity, groundhogs do not make good pets. In Pennsylvania, they may not be possessed without a special permit. They also are a naturally aggressive species, do not accept training very well, never lose their instincts for digging and chewing, and do not fare well in a small cage.
Contact Marcus Schneck at mschneck@pennlive.com.
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January 30, 2021 at 06:30PM
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Wood-chucking woodchucks, groundhog ticks, climbing groundhogs and more for Groundhog Day - pennlive.com
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