Ask the question and you get a riddle back. Ask the internet and you get a number: seven hundred pounds. It is quoted so confidently and so often that most people assume somebody once put a woodchuck in a laboratory and counted. Nobody did.
The number everyone quotes
The figure is usually given as about 700 pounds - roughly 318 kilograms - and it is credited to Richard Thomas, a wildlife technician with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It has been repeated in newspapers, quiz books and trivia columns for decades, to the point where it now functions as the official answer.
What almost never survives the retelling is the reasoning, which is the genuinely clever part.
It measures dirt, not timber
Thomas started from an inconvenient fact: woodchucks do not chuck wood. Not occasionally, not rarely - not at all. Any honest measurement of wood chucked by woodchucks returns zero, which makes for a very short article.
So he substituted. If the animal will not move timber, measure what it does move in bulk, and a woodchuck digging a burrow moves a startling quantity of soil. Work out the volume of a typical burrow system, apply a reasonable density for the earth, and you can weigh the animal's actual output.
That number came out near 700 pounds. Swap the soil for an equivalent weight of wood, and the tongue twister has its answer.
Why the substitution is fair - and where it isn't
As a piece of reasoning it is sound in spirit. It takes an impossible question, finds the nearest measurable analogue, and answers that instead. It is the same move an engineer makes when a quantity cannot be measured directly.
It is not fair as physics. Soil and wood differ in density, in how they are handled, and in why the animal is moving them at all. A woodchuck shifts earth by loosening it with its claws and kicking it backwards with its hind feet - nothing like picking up a log and throwing it.
Treat 700 pounds as an affectionate approximation. It is a joke with arithmetic attached, and it is much better company than an honest zero.
So what should you tell people?
Both answers, in order. The traditional reply first, because it is the one the twister asks for: as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. Then the number, because someone always wants one.
And if they press further, the real answer is the most interesting of the three: none, because a woodchuck has never chucked a single piece of wood in the history of the species.
Frequently asked
Who calculated that a woodchuck would chuck 700 pounds of wood?
The estimate is popularly credited to Richard Thomas, a wildlife technician with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. It circulates widely in trivia collections and press coverage, though it was never published as formal research.
Is 700 pounds the correct answer to the tongue twister?
It is the most widely quoted answer, but the traditional reply is the circular one: as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. The measured answer, strictly speaking, is zero - woodchucks do not chuck wood.
How much is 700 pounds in kilograms?
Roughly 318 kilograms. For scale that is about a fifth of a cord of seasoned hardwood, or a small pickup-bed load of split logs.