Animal · United States, Canada
Groundhog
Marmota monax — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The groundhog is a heavy ground squirrel of North America that digs long burrows and sleeps through the entire winter without waking up. It is also called woodchuck, and every 2 February one of them is asked for a weather forecast.
Picture credit: Ryan Hodnett (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Ryan Hodnett (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Cephas (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the groundhog live?
Home: Field edges, meadows and gardens in North America.
In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States, Canada.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 42-69 cm long including the tail. It weighs about 4 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
A groundhog is a marmot, one of the largest members of the squirrel family, and unlike most squirrels it lives on the ground instead of in the branches. Its burrow runs about four metres through the soil, with two to five entrances and a nest chamber roughly half a metre down. In autumn it eats all the grass, clover, leaves and bark it can hold, then plugs the tunnel and hibernates from October until March or April. During that sleep almost everything stops: the body cools to a few degrees above freezing, the heart beats only four to ten times a minute and one breath comes every six minutes. In spring the animal comes out thin and hungry and starts eating again. Most wild groundhogs live two or three years, a few reach six.
Find it on the globe
Groundhog is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Do groundhogs really sleep all winter?
Yes, they are true hibernators. From October until spring the body cools to a few degrees above freezing, the heart slows to four to ten beats a minute and the animal lives on the fat it built up in autumn.
What does a groundhog eat?
Plants, above all grass and clover, plus leaves, bark, berries and whatever grows in a nearby garden. A grown animal can eat more than half a kilo of green food in one day.
Is a groundhog the same as a woodchuck?
Yes, they are two names for one animal, whose scientific name is Marmota monax. In some regions people also call it whistle-pig, because of the sharp whistle it gives when it is alarmed.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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