FRESNO -- Catrina Sanford, 18 from Fresno wrote -- How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
A woodchuck would chuck as much as a wood chuck could chuck chuck if a woodchuck couild chuck wood. But, a woodchuck wouldn't chuck wood because a wood chuck couldn't chuck wood! anyway,   Woodchucks are good for more than chucking wood.
   The editor sought out an answer to Sanford's age-old question. The Webester's dictionary entry from the year 1941 didn't answer the question. So we went to University campuses all over the US. In the folowing comments there seems to be the hope for a complete answer, maybe.
      Ann Kellan, 21 from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, wrote - Woodchucks, or groundhogs as they are commonly known, generally get noticed just once a year, on Groundhog Day, when people ask the animals to predict the weather.
     But due to a quirk of biology, some woodchucks are performing a much more important service for people year-round. They're serving as models for the study of liver disease in humans. 
   Scientists have discovered that a virus that infects woodchucks in the wild behaves a lot like the virus that gives people hepatitis B.
    "When we started the program in 1979, the woodchuck hepatitis virus had just been discovered. It was clear then that the woodchuck and that virus had real prospects for being used as models to study the human hepatitis B virus infection," said Dr. Bud Tennant, a researcher at Cornell University.
     He is studying the woodchucks(600) at Cornell's breeding colony and experimental population are born disease-free.
     Some are infected with the woodchuck hepatitis virus and monitored closely, including monthly ultrasound exams.
     Because the woodchuck's normal life span is about 10 years, the progress of their liver disease is much faster than in humans.
     Changes that would take 30 to 40 years in a person happen in a tenth of that time in a woodchuck. The infected animals are euthanized before the disease would begin causing them pain.
     The Cornell woodchuck research has already made some important discoveries. They have found that hepatitis B infection causes liver cancer and that vaccination can prevent the disease.
     The scientists now are looking for ways to cure chronic hepatitis B infection, using the woodchucks to screen promising drugs and other therapies before theyare tested on humans.
    Even though the woodchuck virus and the human virus behave similarly, each is particular about who it infects -- so there is no danger of humans catching the woodchuck virus, or vice versa.
    Mike Faraday, 23 from the University of Virginia wrote -- There are social ramifications of woodchucks chucking wood !
     Since the dawn of time man has wondered, how much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
     The purpose of this research is to determine first; if a woodchuck can chuck wood, second; if it can, how much; third; if it cannot, how much would it theoretically be able to chuck if it could and fourth; what are the social ramifications of chucking wood.
     The woodchuck is burrowing rodent native to North America. It is also known as a whistle pig or a groundhog.
     The term woodchuck is probably a folk etymology from the algonquin word for the wood chuck. They are known as whistle pigs due to the whistling sound that the animal makes. They are a grayish-brown color.
     The main problem which had to be overcome before conclusions could be made was to determine the meaning of the word chuck. According to Webster's ninth Collegiate dictionary, chuck can mean to toss, however, nowhere were any woodchucks seen tossing wood. Since I didn't like this result I ignored it and found that it is far more likely that the correct meaning of the word chuck in this context is to have done with.
    The woodchucks were watched in the wild for two months. The person watching the woodchucks dressed as a large woodchuck and wore woodchuck scent in order to not disturb the woodchucks. The original scent used was that of a woodchuck in heat, this did not have the desired effect and its use was discontinued.
     Observations were written in a field book every 17 minutes from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. It was later learned that woodchucks were very active at night. This reported nocturnal behavior is probably not important to the results anyway, but it was necessary to mention.
     It should probably also be mentioned that one of the grad students who worked as an observer was a cultural studies major and could not differentiate between a woodchuck and some breeds of dogs. This should not greatly affect the results.
    Woodchucks were seen many times chucking wood, that is ignoring the wood as if they were "done with" it.
     For simplicity the term "lignin avoidance" will be used in this paper to denote the chucking behavior. Many times, when presented with the choice between a clear path through a field and one through a nearby forest which was merely 100 yards away, the woodchucks would almost always choose the wood- free field, clearly displaying lignin avoidance. In order to test this further, the mouth of the woodchuck's burrow was surrounded on three sides with tree logs.
    The woodchuck again displayed lignin avoidance when choosing a path to its burrow. Only occasionally were woodchucks observed chasing small sticks of wood and barking as they picked them up and returned to a person usually egging them on with commands such as "good dog." It is still unknown how the woodchucks developed this behavioral pattern of lignin nonavoidance.
     The ability of a woodchuck to chuck, exhibit lignin avoidance, being proven, the question of how much was then addressed. It was calculated that a typical woodchuck could actually chuck the majority of the wood in the world. Even young woodchucks which could not walk yet were easily able to chuck all of the wood in Asia and South America.
    The social ramifications of lignin avoidance in woodchucks are relatively minor, since woodchucks are not particularly social animals.
     It was found that woodchucks that did not chuck wood were far more lonely than other woodchucks because they were 10% less likely to meet a woodchuck of the opposite sex near wood than if they were near the discarded and scented woodchuck suit.
     Wood was also found to introduce stress into woodchuck environments. If a large wooden stick was waved at an unsuspecting groundhog, its heart rate would increase, as well as it's oxygen intake.
     Only once was lignin avoidance seen to generate a violent response from another woodchuck. A large woodchuck chased another woodchuck who had been chucking wood back to its burrow barking and snarling.
     It stood over the burrow opening barking and wagging its tail until a person came and shot the woodchuck that had been chucking. Another strange example of the strange symbiotic relationship of man and woodchuck.
     There is no longer a question about whether or not woodchucks chuck wood, or how much wood they can chuck, it is the basic rule which woodchuck society and life is based on.

    [Editor's Note: The Webster's insert was taken from the Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, 2nd Ed. p. 2946, 1941.]

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