NatureBoost Podcast Episode 60, January 2025
"Groundhogs"
SMA
[Introduction music ♫.]
>> Hey there and welcome back to NatureBoost! I'm Jill Pritchard, with the Missouri Department of Conservation. Happy new year! I'm thrilled to be joining you and looking forward to, of course, bringing you more episodes on nature, wildlife and outdoor recreation as we cruise through 2025. Some of my favorite episodes of NatureBoost explore nature folklore and traditions. For example, when we talked about why turkey is the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving table, or how different cultures interpreted solar eclipses, and of course, the legend of Mo Mo the Monster. So, we're starting off the new year with another fun one, Groundhog Day! The quirky tradition of a rodent predicting the weather. How did this bizarre ritual begin? Is it actually accurate, and why a groundhog?
Well, let's dive into it!
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Each year, on February 2nd, a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil emerges from his burrow in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. If it's a sunny day and he sees his shadow, it means 6 more weeks of winter. If it's cloudy and shadowless, it means an early spring. The history of Groundhog Day goes back a lot further than you might think. Centuries, actually. It originates from a European tradition, the Christian Candlemas Festival, which has been celebrated for over a thousand years. Candlemas falls around February 2nd, and marks the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The clergy would bless candles, and distribute them to the people. But, this festival was also associated with a weather prediction tradition, based on animals awakening on specific dates.
[2:08.]
Germans developed their own version, pronouncing the day sunny only if badgers and other small animals saw their shadows. And, when German immigrants known as the "Pennsylvania Dutch" settled in the U.S. in the 18th century, they brought along that custom and chose the groundhog as their weather forecasting mascot.
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The first Groundhog Day celebration was held in 1887, when the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club formed and declared Punxsutawney Phil their weatherman. Over the years, Phil has made his annual appearance in front of thousands of spectators and media outlets at his home in Gobbler's Knob. Just how has Phil managed to keep working for 138 years? Legend says he's been given a special elixir of life, which grants him this unusual longevity.
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So, Phil has been doing this a long time, and maybe that should speak to his expertise? Yeah, not so much. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Phil has a measly 39% success rate, since his first recorded prediction in 1887. But wait, how do we know whether or not he's seen his shadow? Have we finally figured out how to communicate with animals? Well, according to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, we have. After Phil emerges from his borough, he speaks to the club president in "groundhogese", which is a language only understood by the president. His forecast is then translated for the world. Hmm . . . despite his lackluster forecasting ability, thousands still flock to Gobbler's Knob each year for Groundhog Day, which has now grown into quite a festival.
[4:04.]
That includes a groundhog ball, a talent show, and even a lunch with Phil himself and members of the Groundhog Club. And of course, let's not forget the Groundhog Day cinematic masterpiece starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and put it on your watchlist for this month.
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Groundhogs also go by "woodchucks", even though they don't actually chuck wood. That name derived from an old Algonquin term. But, what about "whistle pig"? MDC naturalist Austin Lambert tells us more.
>> Whistle pigs... we call them groundhogs because they live underground, and they're short and squat, kind of like a hawk is. The pig... it comes naturally from the hog part, right? But, they make this whistling call when they get scared.
[Whistling call sound.]
It's a really high pitched, kind of short whistle. When something disturbs them, they'll do that. If they have, particularly mothers with kids around, they'll all dive for the holes at that point, and try to get into a burrow to get to safety.
>> And, here's another curveball for you! Groundhogs are actually just large squirrels!
>> When we look at squirrels, you know, they're a group of rodents. Meaning, they have the large front incisors, they keep on growing throughout their entire life. They have to chew on things just like mice, rats, beavers and all these other rodents do. What separates the squirrels, is they generally have a furrier tail. It's one thing we can key in on. If you see a rodent with a furry tail, it belongs to the squirrel family. Versus a mouse which has a short-haired, or scaly type tail.
There are three classes of squirrels. We have ground squirrels, which groundhogs belong to. Tree squirrels, which are grey, and our fox squirrels, and then flying squirrels. So, they are a squirrel, more specifically a type of ground squirrel. They spend most of their time underground, and their adaptations, their feet, even down to their fur and their face, and their different features are kind of set up specifically so they can burrow, and so they can dig underground.
[6:08.]
>> You can find groundhogs pretty much everywhere across Missouri, and they're one of the few large mammals that are active in the daylight. These rodents can weigh up to 15 pounds, and are almost complete vegetarians. They eat leaves, flowers, and soft stems of various grasses, field crops like clover and alfalfa, and many kinds of wild herbs. They'll occasionally climb trees to feast on apples and paw paws. Through the fall and late winter, groundhogs enter low, low power mode, and go into hibernation.
>> They are these amazing hibernators. That's what Groundhog Day is all about. These guys wake up in early February. In Missouri, it's usually a bit later than that, because we're still pretty much winter in February. But, a couple of weeks after that, they start coming out of their burrows, where they've been since October in some cases. It's a 15 pound animal, again, on the big end, that might lose half of its bodyweight during that time. It goes from having a heartbeat of, you know, 80 beats per minute, to sometimes just 4 to 5 beats per minute.
So, it really slows that down. Breathing 16 times a minute to maybe, once every couple of minutes. They're taking a breath . . . their body temperature drops almost 60 degrees in some cases. So, I mean, that's absolutely amazing, and something we can't truly wrap our head around, because humans are not capable of doing anything remotely like that. But, that's what it takes to survive that long, without eating or really doing anything.
>> Breeding begins soon after they emerge. After a short pregnancy, just a month, females produce a single litter of 2 to 9 pups. At birth, the 4 inch babies are naked, blind, and totally helpless, just like me after I accidentally squirt shampoo in my eye in the shower. [Laughing.]
[8:03.]
They start going outside at around 6 weeks old, and by mid summer, they move to establish their own homes. Their lifespan is usually only 2 to 3 years in the wild, but in captivity, they have lived to age 14. Groundhogs are known to be a property nuisance due to their burrowing, and feeding habits. But, there are positive ways they impact the environment.
>> From an ecological standpoint, they're very important for creating homes for other animals. They do dig their burrows, and these can be quite extensive and fairly large burrows at times. One of the records is 47 feet back into the ground, and up to 6 feet underground, depending on the slope of the land that they're digging in. They can be fairly large, it's a pretty good sized rodent, that weighs about 15 pounds at the upper end. You get all sorts of animals that use those burrows.
A fox might use a groundhog burrow, badgers might even . . . who are capable of digging their own burrows, might take over a groundhog burrow. Then, you get larger animals like coyotes that can move into the burrow, and widen it a little bit more. You know, animals like groundhogs and badgers are more set up to dig their burrows, that they can go out and make a new one almost whenever they want, and do it within a day, lots of times.
But, something like a fox is not set up for digging all that well. So, this creates habitat for those other types of animals, as well as many reptiles, amphibians, insects and other things that also might use their burrows.
>> Do you celebrate Groundhog Day, Austin?
>> No... [laughing.] I don't know . . . other than watching Punxsutawney Phil, I don't know what you'd do to celebrate it.
>> Do you think Punxsutawney Phil, do you have a prediction on his weather prediction this year?
>> I don't... I think he'll either see his shadow, or he won't. Definitely one of those two things! [Laughing.]
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>> How much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood? About 700 pounds, at least according to a New York conservation officer, who in 1988 tried to answer that famous question.
[10:09.]
Of course, woodchucks don't actually chuck wood, but he calculated how much dirt they could throw while digging their burrows. And, based on the size of a typical burrow, around 30 feet at 6 inches wide, and knowing a cubic foot of soil weighs 20 pounds, he determined a wood chuck can chuck 700 pounds of dirt.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into groundhogs and their famous Groundhog Day. You can learn more about these large ground squirrels on our website at missouriconservation.org.
Thanks to naturalist Austin Lambert, to digital media producer Peg Craft, and of course you, for listening to another episode of NatureBoost! I'm Jill Pritchard with the Missouri Department of Conservation, encouraging you to get your daily dose of the outdoors.
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