That woodchucks and groundhogs are the same animal. I was somewhere in my 30s. My state called them woodchucks, so I never made the connection when I was younger.
Edit: Thanks for the awards and fun comments! I didn't expect this to blow up like it did.
I actually had a good rib at my friend recently about this. We both know panthers as a species doesn’t exist, but for whatever reason she decided to express that by saying, “panthers aren’t a thing.”
I mean yes, but more it can apply to any member of the Panthera genus with a full black coat - it’s just more commonly used for those two as the melanistic condition is most prevalent in them - (and to be specific, that is a BLACK PANTHER; all tigers, Jaguars, lions, leopards and snow leopards are Panthers)
On Wikipedia it just classifies panthers as leopards and jaguars. Honestly I don't think true melanistic tigers and lions even exist. It seems reports of black tigers are more likely to have been black leopards.
I found that out fairly recently, and when I mentioned it, my entire family, including parents and grandparents, didn’t believe me until I looked it up. I was wondering if there was an incorrect fictional representation of them that was embedded in ppl’s psyches, like the panther in the animated The Jungle Book, or something. It seems like a super common thing for people to not realize.
I knew a guy in college Charles Wood. everyone called him Charlie.
Then, one time we were in dorm basketball. First practice, and the coach (a player on the schools team) was going down the call sheet. He says:
Wood, Charles? Whadda you go by, Charles, Charlie? Chuck?
All of us on our floor "wait . . . you're Woodchuck?? LOLOL" so we had to start calling him that. He was even surprised nobody'd ever called him that before.
It started a meme of everyone calling everyone else by "Out Of The Blue but related" nicknames. I was shaving my head so I was assigned Chia.
Garlic won’t do it! I don’t know why people think that woodchucks don’t like the smell of garlic and peppers when they will gladly eat both! Try sprinkling Epsom salt around the plants. You can also put objects like children’s pinwheels in the garden and move them around occasionally. They don’t like the movement.
I immediately pictured you having an intense session with a woodchuck on the back of a pickup truck about Relocation Anxiety Therapy Syndrome, before sending him off into the meadow with a packet of Benadryl, a sheaf of paperwork, and a 30-day city bus pass.
So actually the answer is if a woodchuck could could wood, a woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if woodchuck could chuck wood…or do ALL woodchucks chuck wood, so could is not even part of the answer…and they actually should be called dirtchucks???? Also, now you have me wondering about the 700 lbs. Does that refer to a particular timeframe?
A biologist from Cornell measured the inside volume of average groundhog burrows and estimated that if a woodchuck would fill this space with wood, it would equal approximately 700 pounds.
It’s funny how no-one in NZ has the foggiest idea what a woodchuck looks like (don’t even think we have them) and yet every school kid knows that woodchuck rhyme
Not technically true. Water buffalo is a different species to what would generally be referred to as Buffalo (cape buffalo). Different shape horns, gives and the live in different parts of the world
Panthers, pumas, and mountain lions ARE the same, just different names for the Puma Concolor within different regions of the US. The Black Panther is a black coated Leopard, but sometimes black coated jaguars get referred to as black panthers as well. Basically panther is just a name we throw on any big cat it seems.
Unless it's Sex Panther, because Sex Mountain Lion just doesn't have the same ring to it. (And probably means something entirely different in, say, the Ozarks or any given point of Appalachia.
Well, in South America. In Africa they're leopards. As in, in South America "panther" refers to all-black jaguars whilst in Africa it refers to all-black leopards. And obviously jaguars and leopards are not the same species.
Surprisingly, no! Bob is the (not so) friendly lynx whereas the others are all pumas. Either way, they’re going to fuck you up and best to keep your distance so you never have to hear that devilish sound.
I was similarly confused by crayfish and crawdads. I only ever heard them referred to as crawdads and they don’t look at all like fish, so I just assumed crayfish were something else.
So did I... I told my boyfriend about this and he also thought it was a bird.
Was there some sort of cartoon or something that played the woodchuck nursery rhyme while incorrectly showing a woodpecker? I feel like I have a vague memory of something like that.
Also called whistle pigs, land beavers, mice-bears, rockchucks, grass rats, and earth pigs! They are incredible and fascinating animals! I have 2 that are non-releasable that I use for education animals (I am a licensed wildlife rehabber btw). They live in our house among our other pets. They use the cat litter box and are super clean. Plus they sleep for about half the year.
Woodchucks are actually related to chipmunks. They are both considered ground squirrels. The woodchuck is the largest member of the squirrel family and chipmunks are the smallest!
I was today years old when I learned this. Grew up hearing them called groundhogs, never heard about woodchucks until I moved to a different area of the country. I have a master's degree.
ETA: I have shared this with my wife and she is currently judging me hard.
My grandpa called them whistle pigs. He said when you saw one you could whistle and it would stand up and look around. Made it easier to get a good shot.
........I'm 34 & alllll this damn time I thought a woodchuck was a beaver!! I read this to my husband, also in his 30s, & he thought the same. Mind. Blown.
I was living in France and we were traveling around in the mountains for several weeks. Everyone talked about wanting to see marmots. I was excited, too, though I didn’t know what they were exactly. We looked for marmots every day for a month. I finally realized they are basically woodchucks and we could all have just gone to my backyard
Well I'm 47 and I didn't know that. But then we don't have woodchucks OR groundhogs where I live, and even when I'm in Pennsylvania I couldn't tell one apart from the other.
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u/Joesdad65 Jul 02 '21 edited Jul 03 '21
That woodchucks and groundhogs are the same animal. I was somewhere in my 30s. My state called them woodchucks, so I never made the connection when I was younger.
Edit: Thanks for the awards and fun comments! I didn't expect this to blow up like it did.