What do you call an architect, an  archaeologist, a meteorologist, and a disease researcher all  rolled into a furry little package?

Whatever you want, it seems!  Like mouse-bear, or whistlepig, or woodchuck. Despite it  never really chucking wood… But in this episode, we’re going  to use what might be the most common name for the species  Marmota monax: groundhog.

And we’re going to dive into  just a few ways these famous rodents have helped scientists  out over the decades. Spoiler alert: it isn’t actually  their weather forecasting. [♪ INTRO] You can find groundhogs across the eastern and central United States, Canada, and Alaska. They’re great at building large and impressively complex underground burrows.

And in addition to stealing your  garden vegetables, they have some unexpected skills, like climbing  trees, swimming, and whistling. They also have their own holiday.  Groundhog Day, February 2nd. And on that day, every year, dozens of celebrity groundhogs get to play meteorologist.

If they poke out of their  burrow, see their shadows and run back underground, then we’re supposed to have a full, six more weeks of winter weather. For context, six weeks after  February 2nd is March 16th, which is a few days before the  “official” first day of spring. But if the groundhogs don’t see  their shadows, and stay above ground and unbothered, they’re  telling us spring will come early.

This particular activity evolved  from a Celtic festival called Imbolc, which celebrates the halfway  point between winter and spring. It’s a natural time to plan for the year ahead, and to look for clues about  the weather for farming. Then, the tradition was passed  along to Germanic folklore, where a future-telling, hibernating  animal was added to the mix.

In Europe, people looked to  badgers for the weather forecast. But in North America, we  had to rely on groundhogs. Unfortunately for Punxsutawney Phil  and his fellow prognosticators, they’re not particularly  good at their made-up job.

For example, one meta-analysis  compared over 30 years of groundhog predictions against the bloom  dates of an early spring flower. On average, their 33 groundhogs  got it right 50% of the time. Phil himself scored 52%.

In other words, they’re no more accurate than someone randomly guessing  the result of a coin flip. And that might be because  groundhogs have more… personal… reasons to come out of their  burrows on February 2nd. Over winter, groundhogs enter  a state of torpor, where their body temperature can drop  as low as 3 degrees Celsius.

Their heartbeat also slows way, way down from 80 beats per minute to just 5! And for months, they survive by burning through about a quarter of their body weight. This kind of hibernation is not  a cozy, three-month-long nap.

It’s a tricky trade-off that  taxes a groundhog’s health, and puts it at risk from predators. In fact, research has shown  that groundhogs bulk up before winter so that they can  both spend less time in torpor, and not go as deeply into torpor. That gives them an advantage if  they ever need to wake up and run.

But in early February, groundhogs  start to ease out of hibernation and make short trips to scout  out nearby food and mates. They don’t fully commit to  leaving hibernation until… you guessed it… March. Which is fair.

I also need a  month to wake up sometimes. And that’s one reason why scientists  are keen to study groundhogs… not to help predict the weather,  but to help humans safely recover from hypothermia, or  decreased blood flow to the heart. But once they’re awake, groundhogs get busy.

They eat, they dig, they make  a bunch of groundhog babies. And if they’re in the right  place at the right time, they can even make archaeological breakthroughs. But all science needs funding,  so here’s how we get ours.

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Check the QR code on the screen or the link in the description for 20% off an annual premium Brilliant subscription and  the first 30 days for free. Back in 1955, amateur historian  Albert Miller was wandering around some farmland west of  Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, when he noticed bones in a pile of dirt  made by a burrowing groundhog. A closer look turned up some promising artifacts, so he stopped digging and started searching for an archaeologist to  help him excavate the site.

When he connected with researchers in the 1970s, their findings would challenge  decades of archaeological dogma. You see, in the 1930s, scientists  found some ancient spear tips in Clovis, New Mexico, that appeared  to be roughly 13,000 years old. And soon, they uncovered even more of these spear tips scattered at sites all across America.

Put together, these so-called “Clovis  points” suggest that the people who made them first arrived in North  America about 13,500 years ago, and traveled across the continent  in just a few hundred years. That’s pretty fast for the Stone Age. And the evidence was so  substantial that for a long time, archaeologists were sure that the Clovis people must have been the first Americans.

In fact, between the 1930s and  70s, hundreds of discoveries that claimed to be older than  the Clovis points were debunked. But our groundhog archaeologist  didn’t listen to any of those stories. Because it’s a groundhog  and it can’t speak English.

Jokes aside, the site that Albert  Miller and his collaborators uncovered started out as a  field school where student archaeologists could learn excavation techniques. But as the team dug under  the colonial glass, and the ancient hearths, they found a  collapsed rock shelter ceiling. And below that, stone tools that  were up to 16,000 years old.

That’s 3,000 years older than Clovis points. And these tools and Clovis  points looked nothing alike. The team published their findings in  1977, and faced a lot of pushback.

But as time marched forward,  their meticulous methods and ancient discoveries held up to scrutiny. And their research was  supported by other teams finding even more pre-Clovis sites across the continent. Presumably not with the aid  of a local groundhog, though.

These days, this archaeological site is called the Meadowcroft Rockshelter. And scientists have left about a  third of it unexcavated, so they can make even more discoveries when  new technologies get developed. The site also allows tourists  for part of the year.

So if you want to visit, you  can pay your respects to the taxidermied groundhog named Rocky  on display in the visitor center. It’s not every day you get to meet a rodent that may have had a critical role in archaeology. But that’s not all that groundhogs do for us.

They also play a critical role in  some super important medical research. Hepatitis B is a particularly  nasty liver infection caused by an extremely infectious virus  called, well, hepatitis B virus. If left untreated, it can lead to  liver damage, liver cancer, and death.

In 2022, the World Health Organization  estimated that over 250 million people around the world had a  chronic hepatitis B infection, and over 1 million people were newly infected. It’s a big deal. But thankfully, we’ve had a vaccine to prevent it since the 1980s.

It’s a standard part of the infant vaccination schedule in several countries, including the U. S. And while groundhogs were not  used to create the hep B vaccine, they are scientists’ go-to  labrat… or I guess lab-rodent… for learning more about how hep  B works and how to treat it.

That’s because groundhogs can  catch their own version of the hepatitis virus, called  woodchuck hepatitis virus. Remember, groundhogs are just  woodchucks by another name. And the woodchuck hepatitis virus  acts incredibly similar to hep B.

In both cases, when the  virus reaches a liver cell, the virus’ DNA can get all the  way into the cell’s nucleus. That’s where your or the  groundhog’s own DNA is stored. Now, most viruses have genetic  material that isn’t super stable.

It falls apart after copying itself the one time. But both woodchuck hepatitis  and hep B have very stable, circular DNA that can actually  settle down in a cell’s nucleus. In other words, the hepatitis B virus is protected from your usual immune system response.

But researchers are hard at work developing treatments to cure chronic hepatitis B. And that research wouldn’t be possible without help from those lab-groundhogs. So the next time you see a groundhog  searching your garden for some delicious home-grown veggies, maybe  you should scare it away with a very loud “THANK YOU FOR YOUR  CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIETY!” Okay great, that was awesome!

Let’s go ahead and get reset with  the next script in the teleprompter. Alright, ready? Yup.

Your headphones– headphones. SD13 162 Take One, Common Marker. What do you call an architect, an  archaeologist, a meteorologist, and a disease researcher all  rolled into a furry little package?

Whatever you want, it seems!  Like mouse-bear, or whistlepig, or woodchuck. Despite it  never really chucking wood… But in this episode, we’re going  to use what might be the most common name for the species  Marmota monax: groundhog. And we’re going to dive into  just a few ways these famous rodents have helped scientists  out over the decades– Am I in a time loop?

You have to  tell me if I’m in a time loop! Dang it… [♪ OUTRO]