02/02/2026
Happy Groundhog Day!!!
In lieu of Groundhog day, here are some neat facts about our furry burrowing neighbors ❤
The groundhog, also known as a woodchuck, or as my favorite name for them ~ the whistlepig 🙂 ...... is a rodent of the family Sciuridae, belonging to the group of large ground squirrels known as marmots.
A groundhog will whistle when it is alarmed and also in the spring when they begin courting.
Groundhogs are among the few animals that are true hibernators. Their body temperature can drop from about 99 degrees to as low as 37, their heart rate slows from about 80 beats per minute to 5, and their breathing slows from around 16 breaths per minute to as few as 2.
Woodchucks grow upper and lower incisors that grow about a sixteenth of an inch each week.
And as much as we would like to rely on them for weather predictions the fact is the males emerge from dens in early February to wander around their 2- to 3-acre territories in search of burrows belonging to females, which the males will enter and where they may spend the night......in hopes to mate with in March. 😉
