Ecology and life historyĮastern chipmunk at the entrance of its burrowĮastern chipmunks, the largest of the chipmunks, mate in early spring and again in early summer, producing litters of four or five young twice each year. Cheek pouches allow chipmunks to carry food items to their burrows for either storage or consumption. They mostly cache their foods in a larder in their burrows and remain in their nests until spring, unlike some other species which make multiple small caches of food. At the beginning of autumn, many species of chipmunk begin to stockpile nonperishable foods for winter. Chipmunks mostly forage on the ground, but they climb trees to obtain nuts such as hazelnuts and acorns. Around humans, chipmunks can eat cultivated grains and vegetables, and other plants from farms and gardens, so they are sometimes considered pests. They will also occasionally eat newly hatched baby birds. They also commonly eat grass, shoots, and many other forms of plant matter, as well as fungi, insects and other arthropods, small frogs, worms, and bird eggs. However, studies of mitochondrial DNA show that the divergence between each of the three chipmunk groups is comparable to the genetic differences between Marmota and Spermophilus, so the three genera classifications have been adopted here.Īn eastern chipmunk placing food in its cheek pouchĬhipmunks have an omnivorous diet primarily consisting of seeds, nuts and other fruits, and buds. Īs a result, most taxonomies over the twentieth century have placed the chipmunks into a single genus. These classifications were treated as subgenera due to the chipmunks' morphological similarities. sibiricus) is the only living member and Neotamias, which includes the 23 remaining, mostly western North American, species. striatus) is the only living member Eutamias, of which the Siberian chipmunk ( E.
Chipmunks are found in North America, with the exception of the Siberian chipmunk which is found primarily in Asia.Ĭhipmunks may be classified either as a single genus, Tamias, or as three genera: Tamias, of which the eastern chipmunk ( T.
Chipmunks are small, striped rodents of the family Sciuridae.
0 kommentar(er)
