The word ‘woodchuck’ (another name for a groundhog) is thought to be a corruption of the Native American word wuchak – the name in no way references the rodents’ biology or behaviour. In fact, they have very little to do with wood.
In fact a woodchuck’s diets are not tree-based, but consist largely of plants, grasses, fruits and occasional invertebrates. Neither do they make nests of wood, preferring to dig large and elaborate burrows underground.
These burrows were put to service in 1988 to answer the famous riddle: how much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
US Fish and Wildlife worker Richard Thomas theorised that a woodchuck able to excavate a typical 9m-long burrow from the earth could (should it be inclined) move the equivalent volume of wood. It equates to about 317kg “on a good day, with the wind at his back.”
Main image: Groundhog at Laval University campus, Quebec, Canada. © Simon Pierre Barrette /Creative Commons
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