Groundhogs Emerge From the Scientific Shadows

NEW YORK TIMES • February 1, 2022

Groundhog Day may be a tongue-in-cheek holiday, but it remains the one day earmarked in the United States for an animal: Marmota monax, the largest and most widely distributed of the marmot genus, found munching on flowering plants — or, at this time of year, snuggling underground — from Alabama to Alaska. Yet, for all their cultural prominence, groundhogs remain, as it were, in a bit of a shadow. Relatively little is known about their social life. “These guys are much more social than we thought,” said Christine Maher, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Southern Maine and one of the few scientists to study groundhog behavior. She found an ideal study site at the Gilsland Farm Audubon Center on the coast of Falmouth, Maine. There, she has tagged no fewer than 513 groundhogs, following their fates and relationships in fine-grained detail.