groundhogs: checking out ladies, not weather

Forget the shadow, male groundhogs are looking for love when they emerge from their burrows in early February. Stamatis Zervanos, a biologist at Penn State Berks-Lehigh Valley College, studied 32 free-ranging groundhogs over four hibernation seasons. He found that male groundhogs often visit a few female burrows during their brief period of emergence before returning to their own burrows for the last part of their winter’s sleep. The females, on the other hand, tended to stay close to their burrows. Zervanos thinks the males are using these early excursions as an opportunity to establish their territories and to see which females will be available in preparation for groundhog-mating season, which officially begins in early March.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 2/04/2003.