Chipmunk

Chipmunk Temporal range: Early Miocene to Recent
Eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Rodentia
Family:	Sciuridae
Subfamily:	Xerinae
Tribe:	Marmotini Illiger, 1811[1]

A chipmunk is a small squirrel-like rodent. It is in the Sciuridae family. About twenty-three species fall under this title, with one species in North America.

The name may have originally been spelled "chitmunk" (perhaps from a Native American word meaning "red squirrel").^[2] However, the earliest form comes from the Oxford English Dictionary (in 1842) as "chipmonk". Other early forms include "chipmuck" and "chipminck".

Chipmunks are hoarders, meaning they store food for winter.^[3]

Chip 'n Dale, two Disney cartoon characters, are famous chipmunks in pop culture. Another such trio is Alvin, Simon and Theodore (created by Ross Bagdasarian).

Chipmunks eat seeds, nuts, fruit, grass, shoots, and lots of other plants.They also mushrooms, insects, small frogs, worms, and bird eggs. They will also some times eat newly hatched baby birds. When near where humans live, chipmunks can eat grains and vegetables, and plants from their farms and gardens, so they are sometimes considered pests. Chipmunks mostly look for food on the ground, but they climb trees to obtain nuts like acorns. At the beginning of autumn, many chipmunks begin to hoard foods that wont go bad for winter. They mostly put their foods in a special room their burrows and stay in their nests until spring. Cheek pouches allow chipmunks to carry food items to their burrows to store or to eat.

• Media related to Tamias at Wikimedia Commons
• Data related to Tamias at Wikispecies

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