Can You Live With a Wild Groundhog? | 50x50 Science

Can you actually live with a wild groundhog instead of trying to get rid of it? For eight seasons I've been filming generations of wild groundhogs living right here in my backyard. I thought I knew them pretty well but there's a difference between what I think I've learned and what science can actually prove. So I'm taking eight years of chunk land observations to scientists to put them to the test. Can we really coexist with a groundhog? Eight seasons ago I noticed something was stealing vegetables from my garden. Then I caught the thief, a groundhog. Instead of getting rid of him I put a camera out to see what he was doing. That groundhog became chunk. And chunk kept coming back. Then there were other groundhogs. Mothers. Babies. New generations. Before I knew it I wasn't just watching an animal steal tomatoes anymore. I was watching the lives of wild groundhogs unfold right in front of the camera. Over eight seasons I've spent thousands of hours watching them eat, dig, communicate, raise babies, react to danger, and disappear for winter and come back again. After eight seasons almost everything I've learned about groundhogs has happened in one place, my backyard. But observing wildlife and scientifically studying wildlife are two very different things. So I'm bringing eight years of chunk land to the University of Delaware. I am so happy and proud to be representing the great state of Delaware in 50 by 50 science across America. This is a national series with 50 creators meeting 50 scientists, one pair in each state, to discuss science happening in communities all across the country. I'm part of the Northeast and this week we'll be seeing other videos from neighboring states as 50 by 50 travels across America in pursuit of the people and work driving American innovation and creativity. Check out all the videos on the 50 by 50 science YouTube channel. So I'm heading to the University of Delaware to meet scientist Dr. Kyle McCarthy. Dr. Kyle McCarthy is an animal scientist at the University of Delaware. Dr. McCarthy, nice to meet you. Good to meet you. You too, thank you for having me. Of course, welcome to UD. Yeah, looking forward to it. Yeah, good. Yeah, I'm Dr. McCarthy. I am a professor of wildlife ecology and the department of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware. I do all sorts of different research and maybe even more importantly to me, I do lots of teaching. I really enjoy teaching my students about mammals. I teach mammology. I teach a GIS class. I also teach a couple study abroad classes in Costa Rica. As a kid, I got into wildlife because of my father. He's a wildlife biologist and actually was a snow leopard biologist. And we grew up in Alaska and I remember in my childhood home being filled with wild animals. Well, outside my home, we had baby bears that we had to raise on the deck after the mom was killed. We were kind of de facto rehab facility for Juneau, Alaska, whether it was a crane or a porcupine, all sorts of different species. And that's when I really started to just love animals and have this passion for trying to understand how people can coexist with animals. So I have the footage. You have the science. Let's see what Chunk actually taught me. Actually, Chunk looks a little stuck at the moment. OK, OK, enough of the cuteness. So before we even talk, Chunk, show me what you're studying here. Dr. McCarthy, can you tell me about your study? What are you studying here? Oh, yeah. I do a lot of different research. You know, primarily I try to use what's called non-invasive techniques to study mammals. And so by non-invasive, one of the primary things we do is camera trapping. And so these are these remote cameras. A lot of people are familiar with them now. And you've been using cameras for Chunk for a while. Yeah. These ones are nice because we can set them out somewhere in the environment. And anytime something walks in front of them, that's a different temperature than the background. It'll trigger it to take pictures or videos. And so we're not really bugging the animal at this point. Even the flashes are what's called no-glow infrared. So we're not even flashing a bright light. And we can put hundreds of them. You know, sometimes we've got 200 of these out spread across several hundred square kilometers so we can get images of animals. It gives us all sorts of information about where they are, their behavior, what they're doing, the types of habitat they're in. And so that's one of the main focuses of my research here. You know, I thought it was really interesting, some of the footage I've seen of Chunk and those camera shots. We've done something that's not as cool and continuous, but we've developed or we used some designs that other scientists had made. And we've kind of tried to test them a lot for their efficiency in terms of getting images of animals. And so this one, we would attach the camera right here and then the animal would come in from the front. It's got the clear plastic top so there's still natural light so they're not scared to go in. And then we'd put the bait here. And the goal with that was to see if these devices, so that's one of them, would help us get images of smaller mammals. So things like groundhogs, things like raccoons, things like mice, things like shrews. This one's called the selfie tube. That's what the authors who designed that one named it. And so again, the camera goes back where you're at and the animal comes up here and gets its selfie today. That's fascinating. Yeah. I like the concept because it removes all the noise around it. You basically just get like a scope shot of the wildlife. Yeah. And what's really neat for some species, you know, they've tried this with various cats and things like fisher, you can actually tell individuals from their whisker patterns too. So if you can get them to bring their face right in there and give that shot up. Kind of like how we saw the groundhog in the den this morning. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so if we saw him often enough, we might be able to tell who he is just by the patterning of his whiskers in that space. Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah. So that's a lot of what we do. And, you know, lots of students and lots of teaching in that process and they get their hands on and get involved. It's pretty fun. It's actually a pretty fun job. So Chunk seems interested. Okay. Okay. So eight years of footage gives me observations. Science gives us a way to test those observations and what they actually mean. So could Chunkland actually be useful for science? Yeah. I mean, so I don't know, I've shown you some of the footage that we got from like our research, right? And they're just a few shots here and there, the groundhog, and we get a little snippet of what it's doing. But I think that type of that type of long-term and especially like really detailed, continuous monitoring of a mammal, I think it'd be really useful because you can start to get it energy budgets and ethograms and behavior profiles. And so you probably like by watching Chunk know a lot more about some of the idiosyncrasies of how a groundhog behaves than most people, right? Because we see them here and there, we see them for a minute, or I get a picture of them, like two pictures of them. But you've watched Chunk for hours and hours and your other Yeah, I think there's a lot of value there. I think at the very least too, just to help scientists form questions, because one of the ways we form questions is through observation. And I'm sure like you observing Chunk has raised questions in your own. And those are the questions then we can go on to try to answer. And maybe that takes more chunks and more locations. But yeah, I think it could be really useful. So Chunkland isn't a controlled scientific study, but it can give some pretty interesting questions to investigate. Which means it's time to put some of my biggest Chunk theories to the test. Does Chunk know me? I think Chunk probably recognizes you. I think, you know, for a rodent and a groundhog, I think that recognition might be different than us. I mean, really a lot of olfaction, right? I mean, I don't, I'm not saying you're smelly, but I think Chunk knows who you are. Not only does Chunk know me, he thinks he owns the place. How about we check out a groundhog's world? Because what we see above ground is only part of Chunk's world. A huge part of Chunk's life happens underneath us. If we could see underneath Chunkland, what would actually be down there? Well, I mean, he's going to have multiple chambers in there and multiple holes, right? There's going to be kind of a main entrance hole. And then there's going to be several escape holes in different spots as well. If we were to be able to dig in there, I think we would maybe find, you know, they're going to have both like a nest type hole where they're going to have their offspring and nurse them. But then deeper down, they're going to have a hibernacula. So like this, we're kind of raised up on the ground here, right? But this groundhog is going to want to get below the frost line before it hibernates. And so probably going to go pretty deep down in there. And then some latrine holes, you know, those holes that they are going to put their waste into, that they're going to defecate into, and then eventually actually fill that hole in and make another latrine hole and defecate in there. But I imagine it's pretty dark. I imagine kind of cozy. But I don't know if we'll get anything, but you want to try to see what it looks like. Let's go in there and see. Hmm. Wait, wait. Hold on. Wait. Oh, oh my gosh. It's a groundhog. Wow. Hey, buddy. Oh, wow. His teeth. Okay. Let's not disturb him too much. See you, buddy. Here comes Mama Chunk. She's coming to check on the babies. They're excited to see her. They're trying to keep up and out of danger. When Chunk suddenly stands up, freezes, or takes off, what's happening? They call it kin selection and they've studied it a lot with goblins, ground squirrels in California. And it's essentially, and you know, Chunk might whistle, be more likely to whistle if he sees a predator, if his family members are around, than if non-Chunk family members are around. So he's still, because he's putting himself at risk, right? He's like, and he's putting himself at risk because the predator is like, oh, there you are. So we'll only do it if the family's present. It's like a community thing, like they're kind of looking out for each other. Yeah. And evolutionarily, it's also helping his genes continue in the gene pool, even if he was the one targeted by the predator, at least maybe some of the geologists would not have seen. If there's one area where I feel extremely qualified, it's what groundhogs like to eat. Chunkland has conducted approximately eight seasons of extremely unofficial taste testing. But take away my garden, what would Chunk naturally be eating? I think in the wild, probably a lot of clover, grasses, I would assume berries and stuff like that. Some of the soft mass fruits, maybe a little bit of bark and trees and shoots like that. You know, a lot of those high value things like you're probably growing it with maybe didn't exist in Chunkland originally. These have been some of my favorite moments in the eight years of Chunkland. Watching a mother bring her baby out of a burrow, watching them explore, watching them grow, and eventually watching them head out on their own. But for now, it's time for the little chunks to follow their mama around. What are these babies actually learning from their mom? Well, how to be a groundhog, right? Which one of the most important things for a groundhog? It's eating, right? As you're well aware. And I think probably one of the more important things a mom's going to teach the babies is what plants are dependable, which plants are toxic, which plants to focus on and they told you to eat it. But then all the other social cues that parents have to pick up on from children, where to go, what to do and what not to do. What happens to Chunk when he preps for hibernation? Well, I mean, like to start with, right, he's got to do what's called hyperphage. He's going to eat a lot, even more than he's been eating all summer. And he's just going to eat and go through a sudden intense bout of eating. But then before he goes into hibernation, he's also going to try to get rid of all that, try to get his digestive tract out. He's going to eat probably like some dry leaves and stuff that helps his digestive system out. That's amazing. When they hibernate, how much they shut down their metabolism, they're going to drop their metabolism by 90, 95%. Their heart rate, yeah, I mean, it's crazy. They're going to go from a heart rate of like 100 beats per minute, 90 beats per minute, it's going to go down to like four to 10 beats per minute. And they're going to then, I mean, part of what's happening then, right, by shutting your metabolism down the way mammals live, the way mammals live in the environments they live in, as they use their metabolism to generate heat. But by shutting your metabolism down, you're also going to have to let your body approach ambient temperature. And so in terms of those dens and the hibernacula, right, being below the frost line, they're trying to get to that ambient temperature that their body can survive at, even when their metabolism's not working. So they're going to end up from being somewhere around actually nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit, normal body temperature, they're going to drop down to about 40 degrees in terms of their body temperature. Groundhogs and the other ground squirrels, they actually wake up every couple of weeks. They'll actually come out of hibernation and their body temperature will rise back up, their basal metabolic rate will rise back up, they kind of check some things out, their cells metabolize a little bit, and then they go back to sleep. And so part of that, people think maybe they're looking for that cue from sunlight or from temperature, like is it time to wake up for the year yet or not? But also there's still a lot of research going on into what that really means for their cells and and really staying alive. It doesn't look like these guys are going back to sleep anytime soon. So what tells a groundhog it's time to come out of hibernation? I mean, they have an internal clock, right, the brain actually has a clock inside it essentially. But also a lot of times cues from nature, obviously temperature change is one of them, but a big one for mammals is they can actually tell how long a day is. And so we call that photoperiod. And so as their brain is recognizing days getting shorter and shorter until they hit a certain point or it's like, oh, it's getting close to hibernation time. So I think it's a So with the past eight years of me coexisting with Chunk and taking care of him from afar, have I changed Chunk? I think I think Chunk's still a wild animal, right? I think you've been aware that you've given him his space, as we talked about earlier. Yeah, maybe Chunk doesn't associate you as a thread. Maybe Chunk has an association with you as potentially providing. So you're saying I'm the door-dash guy. Yeah, you're the door-dash guy. But that doesn't mean he's lost those underlying traits. He still has a predatory response. He's still a wild animal. He's still reproducing, right? And so yes and no, but not in a bad way. And just in a way where I think Chunk is. So maybe the biggest thing that eight seasons of Chunkland has taught me is that coexistence doesn't mean domestication. It doesn't mean every animal needs our help. And it doesn't mean wildlife needs to become comfortable around us. So for somebody watching this who suddenly discovers a groundhog living in their yard, what does responsive coexistence actually look like? And can you coexist with a groundhog? Well, I think we can live with groundhogs in our backyards just fine, right? There are certain places we may not want them to go. Maybe into our vegetable garden if we are trying not to have them eat our vegetables. And so maybe we have to try to squeeze them. Or maybe not deep under our foundation if that groundhog can start to affect the structure of the house. But in a lot of cases it's not. So I think responsible coexistence means letting them be there, letting you be there, enjoying the fact that you've got a wild animal that you can see in your backyard. And then just protecting the important, what's important to you, right? In terms of keeping them away from it. But they'll be fine. And they can make do with what you're still leaving them in your yard. When Chunk first showed up, I thought a groundhog had invaded my garden. But eventually I realized something. Chunk didn't put a burrow underneath my garden. I put a garden where groundhogs already lived. Maybe that's what Chunk has been teaching me all along. We all have lives somewhere. This is our home, but it's their home too.