Abby Vander Linden
EARTH'S ORGANISMS
Mammals Ecology Behavior
Ecology and Behavior of Woodchucks
Opposition Research on My Garden’s Greatest Nemesis
As a relative newcomer to somewhat-rural New England, my disappointment at no longer living in a major city was offset by the opportunity to finally have the big vegetable garden of my dreams. This spring I built a raised bed and planted rows and rows of salad greens. I was pretty naïve about the local wildlife—I hadn’t seen any deer in the area, so I thought my plants would be fine.
Well. Lesson humbly learned! The first sprouts were chomped immediately. I wised up and built a haphazard fence using thin wooden slats and some plastic bird netting. I planted more seeds, figuring I’d done a pretty good job.
I was so, so wrong.
Within days of the next leaves unfurling, ferocious incisors had sheared through the plastic fence in a dozen places and laid waste to the tender greens inside. Careful observation from my front porch led me to the culprit, a rotund animal that became my gardening nemesis: the woodchuck.
While the woodchucks devouring my garden were a nuisance, they weren’t causing any harm and have as much right to live on the property as I do. But with so much other vegetation in the area, why did they have to target my home-grown lettuce? When I saw one individual barge through the wreckage of the plastic fence and lay down to sun himself, I knew I had to investigate this formidable foe. I hoped that learning about their ecology and behavior would help me build a woodchuck-proof fence—the kind of fence that says, “I support your right to exist on this planet but stay OUT of my garden.”
First: what is a woodchuck?
By Cephas - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Figure 1. The woodchuck or groundhog, Marmota monax, is related to squirrels, chipmunks, and marmots.
A woodchuck (also called a groundhog or whistlepig) is a large ground squirrel and a member of the squirrel family of rodents. Unlike its closest relatives, the alpine marmots, the woodchuck lives in lowland areas ranging across eastern North America[1]. They are stocky mammals with short bushy tails, and, in my professional opinion, adorably grouchy expressions.
What do they eat?
Even if a woodchuck could chuck wood, it probably won’t when there’s an easier source of food available. Woodchucks feed during the day and are mostly herbivorous, preferring to eat grasses and low ground cover plants such as alfalfa, clover, or dandelions. They probably think my garden is a delicious buffet. However, they will also eat the leaves and bark of trees, insects, and even bird eggs to help them pack on body fat for their winter hibernation [1]. Like all rodents, woodchucks have large incisor teeth at the front of their jaws. They use these to gnaw wood, to clip grass and leaves while eating, and to decimate plastic fences. Furthermore, the bones in their skull and jaw are very strong and accommodate large chewing muscles, which help them grind up tough plant material.
By D. Gordon E. Robertson - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
Figure 2. They are technically ground squirrels and don’t look particularly graceful, but woodchucks can climb trees pretty well. I was worried they would also be able to climb a fence!
How do they get around?
Although they on the chunky side, woodchucks can definitely climb trees to escape from predators or to feed on leaves [2].
However, woodchucks are more at home underground than in trees. Woodchucks are semi-fossorial mammals who burrow and dig dens to use as shelter from predators and as a place to raise their young. Woodchucks are scratch-diggers, meaning they use their forelimbs and claws to burrow and remove soil. They display traits that are well-adapted for digging, including rounded ears that keep out soil when underground and short, muscular forelimbs. However, one study of the forelimb muscle strength in woodchucks found that they generate relatively low forces while digging, meaning they are less-specialized burrowers than other digging animals such as moles [3].
Research conclusions:
After learning about my rodent neighbors, I realized that planting more vegetables would be useless without a serious investment in materials. The fence had to withstand both attempts to scale the sides and tunneling attacks below ground, so plastic netting and mostly-rotten wood was not going to be enough.
I bought some sturdy wood, chicken wire, and a staple gun, and used what I had learned about the chewing, digging, and climbing abilities of the chucks to construct a fence. I made the chicken wire three feet high and loose at the top, so that it would be too wobbly to climb. I also dug a trench around the garden bed and buried two feet of chicken wire to deter digging. Then I planted some beans, crossed my fingers, and waited.
Figure 3. Successful woodchuck-proof garden! Due to my lack of expertise with the staple gun and chicken wire, the fence is pretty loose up top, which makes it hard to climb. The buried portion makes it hard to dig under, too. Nice try, rodents! Image source: Abby Vander Linden
One month later, I can report success! I’ve seen a woodchuck try to climb the fence only to be dumped by the wobbly wire. I found holes dug around the garden, none of them deeper than the buried chicken wire. Best of all, there’s no sign of rodent incisor damage to any of my healthy plants! After my frustration-fueled research, I now enjoy watching the woodchucks chow down on the dandelions in my yard. I like to think we’ve come to a mutual understanding.
References:
[1] Kwiecinski, Gary G. “Marmota monax.” Mammalian Species 591 (1998): 1-8.
[2] Swihart, Robert K. and Peter M. Picone. “Arboreal foraging and palatability of tree leaves to woodchucks.” American Midland Naturalist 125 (1991): 372-274.
[3] Rupert, Joseph E., Rose, Jacob A., Organ, Jason M. and Michael T. Butcher. “Forelimb muscle architecture and myosin isoform composition in the groundhog (Marmota monax).” Journal of Experimental Biology 218 (2015): 194-205.
More From Thats Life [Science]
- Freshwater Mussels are Declining: Why Should You Care, and What Can You Do?
- The Story of Chestnuts in North America: How a Forest Giant Disappeared from American Forests and Culture
- Friendships, Betrayals, and Reputations in the Animal Kingdom
- Why Don't Apes Have Tails?
- Giant Bacteria, Giant Genomes
- 'Til the Yeasts Come Home? - Domesticating Microbes
- Built Different
- COVID-19 Stinks!
- How do microbes help animals adapt?
- What's the world's largest virus?
- How Monkeys and Apes Fight Climate Change by Eating Fruit
- Sound the Alarm! One Unique Way Primates Avoid Being Eaten
- The Drama of Barotrauma: Blobfish, Rockfish, and More
- Why are some primate infants brightly colored?
- Technological Advancements…. Thanks to Ferrets?
- Are palm trees really trees?
- The Eastern Spotted Newt: A Wandering Teenage Identity Crisis
- Survival by Aposematism and Mimicry: The Evolution of Bright Color Patterns
- Sifak-huh?
- You are a fish
- Things That Glow Pink in the Night: Why do some animals have fluorescent coloration under ultraviolet light?
- When You Call a Fish a Frog
- Who’s Got the Biggest Genome of Them All?
- The Biology of Booze ft. Tequila
- Dying Tomatoes, Healthy Kittens, and the EMP500: Why you should care about the International Society for Microbial Ecology
- The Purebred Poodle Problem
- Let It Glow
- I’m Likin’ That Lichen
- Celebrate the Holidays with a Decorative Parasite
- Sleeping One Hemisphere at a Time
- Through the Mycologist's Hand Lens: Deceptive Decomposers
- Life Science in Outer Space!
- 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Rats
- Watermelon Snow
- Critter Candid Cam
- Three Cool Plants in Hot Places
- A parasite only a moth could love
- Telling tales of plants and their names
- The Colorful World of Primate Hair
- Where do fish go in winter?
- You Scratch My Back and I’ll Scratch Yours
- Alien Microbes: How studying hyperthermophiles can help us discover life on other planets
- Life, the universe, and everything: Dreams of being a biophysicist
- Bug Sleuth – One Entomologist’s Mission to ID a Mysterious Swarm of Wasps
- Horny and Hungry: The Dilemma of Sexual Cannibalism
- Who’s who? The elusive difference between butterflies and moths
- Tuberculosis - A Romantic Disease?
- Ode to a Few Arachnids
- Monotropa uniflora - This wildflower is pretty wild
- Eavesdropping in the Animal Kingdom: Sneaky Creatures Just Trying to Get Ahead
- Trypanosomes - A Weird Pathogen You Haven't Heard Of
- A Beautiful 9/11 Tribute, but a Fiasco for Migratory Birds
- Cats can have AIDS, too.
- Part 2: Does catching Pidgeys help you notice Pigeons? Interviews with Pokémon Go Researchers
- Biodiversity in my Backyard: Encounters with Pidgeys and Dratinis, Part 1
- Fins, Limbs, Rays, and Digits – A Beginner’s Guide to Terrestrial Living
- Fins, Limbs, Rays, and Digits – A Beginner's Guide to Terrestrial Living
- Five things that really stink about the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug
- Tricks but no Treats - An Orchid’s Guide to Making a Fool of Your Pollinator
- Tracking the lost years - where do baby sea turtles grow?
- Posing as a Bird Mama: the adventures of a researcher-turned-bird-parent
- Hot moves and sexy sons · When Boys Become Men By Dancing
- The hungry caterpillar in real life
- Mantis Shrimp Vision - Seeing in Secret Code
- When It Comes to Bird Beaks - Size Matters
- Is your gut trying to kill your resolve? · Mind over microbe
- Recent talk of walls in the media has brought up a lot of emotions, but what do walls do in nature? · When a Wall is just a Wall
- Bees are more than buzzing insects around you · May the Bees Be With You: Maintaining the Sweet Balance in Life
- Neither a toad nor a worm · Nematodes: The super microscopic animal!
- Snap! Flash! Bang! Find out how ocean-dwelling pistol shrimp fire bubble ‘bullets’ to stun their unsuspecting prey. · How Pistol Shrimp Kill with Bubbles
- Who needs males after all?
- Ecology and Behavior of Woodchucks · Opposition Research on My Garden’s Greatest Nemesis
- Vision in Jumping Spiders · Watching Your Every Move
- Slimed and Consumed - The Blob is Real!
- The Evolution and Ecological Impacts of Cats · Lion in Sheep's Clothing
- What happens when frogs have to compete for acoustic space and a chance to be heard? · Struggling to be Heard - Competition in a Complex Soundscape
- Think Genghis Khan and Napoleon were the most successful invaders? Think again. · Invasive Species and Invasion: Part 1
- When, and how, terror birds invade
- 8 Reasons Plants Are Amazing
- Too Clean for Comfort · How our obsession with cleanliness might be hurting our health
- Stop, evaluate, and listen - serotonin surges when a female is present
- No Teeth, Long Tongue, No Problem - Adaptations for Ant-eating
- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Predators, Parasitoids, and Parasites
- How our microbiome affects our health and vice versa · If you don't care for your microbiome, you might want to start
- Finding new ways to grow bacteria to progress science · Culturing the Least Cultured Members of Society
- Hit the Road Jack
- What Happened to Your Nose?
- Building better plants - Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution
- Love Songs for Nobody - Birdsong in Winter
- We know we get infections from time to time. Why does this happen? · The Evolution of Virulence
- How cheese rinds may be a valuable tool for microbial discovery · The Unseen World – On Cheese?
- Find Me Where the Wild Things Are
- A commentary on how to make science more ‘clickable’ · You won’t believe this simple trick to tell if your coral is healthy or not
- Some species hide in plain sight, but scientists have ways to suss them out · Cryptic Species Hide in Plain Sight
- Minuscule Hitchhikers Pinch a Ride · Creature Feature - Pseudoscorpions
- World Fish Migration Day 2016!
- Walking With Giant Anteaters
- Why we should care about sea turtles · When A Sea Turtle Balanced Earth
- More ›