Groundhog predicts while barely awake
- John Lorson: The Rail Trail Naturalist
- January 31, 2025
- 489
There are those who would hate to admit it, but everyone is watching, even if just a little. Winter has, for the first time in several years, been placing its signature stamp on the landscape since December. And now, halfway through the season’s 90-day run, the world gathers around a hollowed-out tree stump in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, holds its collective breath and waits for the word from a woodchuck.
To suggest a groundhog could deliver a meteorological forecast is not all that outrageous. Humans have been watching animals for cues and clues about the weather probably as long as they’ve shared space on this planet. The migrations of waterfowl and large mammals have driven the actions of man for millennia — the greatest motivator for each being to place themselves in the right location at the right time to take advantage of seasonally available resources.
For the groundhog, a low-slung and relatively slow-moving creature, fleeing winter for greener pastures is not an option. And while some individuals have proven themselves ambitious enough to climb trees to view the greater world, the species mostly aspires to sleep the season away in place rather than struggle through winter on a desperation diet like most of his rodent relatives.
The juicy and delicious grasses, flowers and fruits of three seasons are enough to plump the groundhog sufficiently to fuel a hibernation that lasts several months. Why suffer above ground when food is scarce, protective cover is at a minimum and cold temperatures require extra energy just to keep your motor running?
During hibernation the groundhog’s metabolism slows profoundly as its heartrate sinks to as low as five beats per minute from an average pulse of around 80, and its body temperature may drop to just 5 F above freezing from a normal of 99 F. Even with the greatly reduced power demands, the groundhog will still typically burn up a third of its body mass during the big sleep.
Hibernation is a fantastic survival strategy for a number of reasons. It eliminates the inherent danger of travel, it limits exposure to local predators and it assures the creature will wake up in familiar surroundings ready to get down to business. That business for a groundhog is noshing on all sorts of greening vegetation and locating a mate to get busy on the next generation of little whistlepigs.
Back to the notion that a single member of a lower species, no matter how hallowed, can accurately make the weather call for an entire hemisphere, I offer you this statistic: Punxsutawney Phil as gotten it right 39% of the time over the past 139 years. Had Phil called a coin toss on the side during each one of those years, he’d be standing on a solid 50% success rate — even if he called his favorite, “Tails,” every single time!
Of course, each of us can choose whether or not to place stock in Punxsutawney Phil’s pronouncement. As for me, I’ll be happy to hear what the little fellow has to say, but I’m not planning on putting my skis up for the season just yet.
If you have comments on this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email jlorson@alonovus.com. You also can follow along on Instagram @railtrailnaturalist.