recently, sarah has done some research into a question which has stumped many a scientist for years. and amazingly, despite many of the worlds greatest minds being unable to find an answer, she has manged to. but i find some of her working to be inaccurate, due to the fact that certain factors have not been taken into account, such as season variation in the availability of wood to chuck, the affect of weather on the ability of the woodchuck to chuck, as well as the competition between individual woodchucks as to chucking rights.

her results are based on a wood chuck being able to chuck 8hours a day for all 365 days of the year. but during winter, there tend to be days where severe weather would make it nigh impossible for the woodchuck to go 'chucking'. also, during spring and summer, the trees which provide the wood for the woodchucks to chuck tend to be healthier, which, combined with better weather, causes less wood to be available for chucking, as opposed to winter and autumn where the trees are weakened and wood readily falls from the trees in the less favorable weather. these two factors both result in an impairment to the wood chucks ability to chuck.

if we assume that during the winter period, 1 in 5 days is less favorable to chucking, and 1 in 10 days is impossible for chucking, the total amount gathered during this quarter of the year is reduced by approx 15-20%, a significant reduction in the final result.

during the summer and spring periods, there is much less wood available, which results in longer periods between actually chucking, due to the woodchuck having to spend more time locating each piece. this again results in a reduction, although only approx 10% over both the summer and spring periods

during autumn, we assume the weather is only a minor issue on 1 in 10 days, resulting in a 5% decrease in chucking ability

when totaled for the year, these figures add up to an overall average of 10% reduced chucking for the year, lowering sarahs total of 584 kg of wood per year to 526kg per year.

also, in addition to this, in the later period of the woodchucks life, some time is allocated to mating, competing for territory, and others. this would also have a marked decrease in the total, esp during the mating season when almost all the woodchucks time is devoted to finding and competing for a mate.  if we assume that this occurs for 5 weeks a year, each year, and that the woodchucks does not mate during it's first year, that means in the last two years of it's life, it is only wood chucking for 47/52 weeks in the year. this reduces the wood chucked during those years from the above 526kg to 475kg.

so with these new factors accounted for, the total wood a woodchuck could chuck would be a mere 1213kg in it's entire lifespan...if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

 

Tags: bs, wood, woodchucks
Current Mood: nerdy