Results: Groundhog facts you need to know for Groundhog Day
As the myth of Groundhog Day goes, if a groundhog sees its shadow on February 2, winter will last another six weeks. And while Punxsutawney Phil’s handlers maintain 100 percent accuracy in his seasonal predictions, the numbers tell a different story. Stormfax calculated that Phil has seen a 39 percent forecasting success rate since 1887. According to a Canadian groundhog study, this is just 2 percent higher than the average success rate of 37 percent (the most accurate hog-nosticators in their study residing in Yellowknife, Canada, with a 50 percent accuracy). Source: Reader's Digest
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What facts are you familiar with (section #1)?
Groundhogs whistle at potential mates. It's because of this odd adaptation that groundhogs are also known as "whistle-pigs."
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Groundhogs are members of a group of large ground squirrels called marmots, but they're also called land beavers and woodchucks.
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The Groundhog Diet consists mainly of grass, herbs, and plants like dandelions, daisies, and goldenrods. They also have an eye for human crops, like carrots and corn. And yes, they do occasionally eat tree bark.
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Most groundhogs live in eastern and central United States, although you can find them in Canada and even Alaska. They tend to settle down on the edge of a forest or woodland near an open field, where they'll likely construct their underground burrows. However, you may also spot them climbing trees.
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Groundhogs build pretty impressive homes. Their underground burrows include multiple "rooms" with different purposes, including a sleeping chamber, a nursery chamber, and a waste chamber. The entire burrow can stretch anywhere from eight to 66 feet long.
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What facts are you familiar with (section #2)?
Few animals are as dedicated to hibernating as groundhogs. Known as "true hibernators," they hibernate from late fall to late winter or early spring, which can add up to as many as six months of deep sleep, depending on their climate. During this time, their body temperatures can drop below 20 degrees Celsius, and their heart rates slow from 80 beats per minute to just five.
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Male groundhogs wake up early (after about three months) to start looking for potential mates. "Typically, there's a male that has a territory that includes several female burrows. And there's some competition for that territory. "They try to defend that territory, and they go from burrow to burrow to find out if that female is still there." Groundhogs start visiting females as early as February, and then go back to sleep until mating season starts in March.
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Groundhogs weren't always the holiday's honored animal. Penn State University Libraries show that medieval cults favored bears, holding parties by their dens, gussied up in grizzly costumes and waiting for a bear to lumber out from hibernation and check the weather. English and German Catholics celebrated a similar tradition with sacred badgers. When badgers proved hard to come by for Pennsylvania's German settlers in the early 1800s, colonists adapted their old-country tradition to an abundant New World animal: the groundhog.
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A typical groundhog will live six to eight years in the wild. Punxsutawney Phil, the official groundhog of America's largest Groundhog Day celebration.
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While Gobbler's Knob saw its share of tourism every Groundhog Day since the tradition began, actor Bill Murray truly put it on the map. Following the 1993 release of Columbia Pictures' Groundhog Day, starring Bill and Phil, Gobbler's Knob started seeing crowds as large as 35,000 people.
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If a groundhog sees its shadow on February 2, winter will last another six weeks. Do you think we will have an early spring or late winter?
early spring
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late winter
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undecided
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560 votes
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