Is a Groundhog the Same as a Woodchuck? Names Explained

One species, many names

The groundhog has collected more common names than almost any other North American mammal. Here are some of the most widely used:

Scientists avoid this confusion by using the scientific name. Marmota is the genus of marmots, and monax comes from an Algonquian word usually translated as “digger”. Carl Linnaeus first described the species in 1758, at first placing it among the mice and rats as Mus monax.

Where does the word woodchuck come from?

Despite appearances, “woodchuck” has nothing to do with wood or with chucking. The name was borrowed from a Native American language of the Algonquian family. Many sources trace it to a word such as the Narragansett wuchak. Some older dictionaries suggest instead that it comes from a Cree or Ojibwe word for a different animal, the fisher, which English speakers misapplied.

Either way, English-speaking settlers reshaped the unfamiliar word into two familiar English words, “wood” and “chuck”. Linguists call this process folk etymology. The same thing turned the Spanish cucaracha into “cockroach”.

Where does the name groundhog come from?

“Groundhog” is a plain English description. The animal lives in the ground, in burrows it digs itself, and its heavy, rounded body and short legs reminded early settlers of a small hog. Grunting and squealing sounds may have added to the comparison.

The name is especially familiar in Pennsylvania, where speakers of Pennsylvania German called the animal Grundsau, literally “ground sow”, in some areas, and Grundaks, “ground badger”, in others. This is the region where the Groundhog Day tradition began, so the holiday took the name groundhog rather than woodchuck. Find out whether the holiday’s forecasts work in Is Groundhog Day accurate?.

Is a groundhog a marmot or a squirrel?

Both. The groundhog belongs to the squirrel family, Sciuridae, which includes tree squirrels, flying squirrels, chipmunks, prairie dogs and ground squirrels. Within this family it is one of about 15 species of marmots, the largest ground squirrels.

Most marmots live in mountains. North America has the hoary marmot of the northwestern mountains, the yellow-bellied marmot of the West, the Olympic marmot and the rare Vancouver Island marmot. Europe has the Alpine marmot, and several species live in the mountains and steppes of Asia. The groundhog is the odd one out: a lowland marmot of farmland, meadows and woodland edges.

Groundhogs share many habits with other marmots. All dig burrows, all are plant-eaters, all give whistling alarm calls and all are true hibernators, as described in Do groundhogs hibernate?. A key difference is social life: groundhogs are the most solitary marmots, while many mountain marmots live in family colonies.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?

The famous tongue twister asks: “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” It became popular in the United States in the early 20th century and remains a favorite with children.

The real answer is none. Woodchucks do not throw, carry or eat wood. They eat green plants such as clover, grasses and dandelions, and they move soil, not timber. A joke estimate often repeated in newspapers, based on the amount of soil a woodchuck moves when digging a burrow, put the figure at around 700 lb (about 320 kg) of wood, but this was never a serious scientific measurement.

Woodchucks can, however, climb trees, as the photo above shows. They usually do so to escape a predator or to get a better view of their surroundings.

How to recognize a groundhog

Whatever you call it, the animal is easy to identify. Look for:

• A heavy, rounded body about 42–68 cm (16.5–27 in) long including the tail, weighing 2–6.3 kg (4.4–14 lb).
• Grizzled brown fur with paler tips and darker brown to black feet.
• A short, bushy tail, about a quarter of the body length.
• A habit of sitting bolt upright near a burrow entrance with a mound of soil.

In eastern North America it is much larger than the other common ground-dwelling squirrel, the striped eastern chipmunk. Out West, where groundhogs do not live, a similar animal on rocky slopes is probably a yellow-bellied or hoary marmot.