Chipmunk
- This article is about the animal. For the military training aircraft, see De Havilland Chipmunk.
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Chipmunk is the common name for any small
squirrel-like
rodent species of the genus
Tamias in the family
Sciuridae. About twenty-five species fall under this title, mostly native to
North America, with one species in northeastern
Asia. The common species of the eastern
United States is the Eastern Chipmunk
Tamias striatus, with several species in different parts of the western US.
The name stems from the loud
chip sound that they make, in addition to a rapid
trill sound. They are also called striped squirrel or ground squirrel; however, the name "ground squirrel" is more usually kept for the genus
Spermophilus, though
Tamias and
Spermophilus are only two of the 13
genera of ground-living
sciurids.
Though they are commonly depicted with their paws up to the mouth, eating peanuts, or more famously their cheeks bulging out on either side, chipmunks eat a much more diverse range of foods than just nuts. Their
omnivorous diet consists of grain, nuts, birds' eggs, and insects. Come autumn, many species of chipmunk begin to stockpile these goods in their burrows, for
winter. Other species make multiple small caches of food. These two kinds of behavior are called larder hoarding and scatter hoarding. Larder hoarders usually live in their nests until
spring.
Chipmunks are often tame even in the wild, and readily come for food in gardens and at picnic sites in
national parks and forests; the temptation to feed or even pet them should be strictly avoided, as they can carry dangerous diseases, including
rabies, and in parts of the western US,
tularemia and
bubonic plague.
Species of chipmunk include:
- Tamias alpinus (Alpine Chipmunk)
- T. amoenus (Yellow pine Chipmunk)
- T. canipes (Gray-footed Chipmunk)
- T. cinereicollis (Gray-Collared Chipmunk)
- T. dorsalis (Cliff Chipmunk)
- T. merriami (Merriam's Chipmunk)
- T. minimus (Least Chipmunk)
- T. obscurus (California Chipmunk)
- T. ohrogenys (Yellow-cheeked Chipmunk)
- T. palmeri (Palmer's Chipmunk)
- T. panamintinus (Panamint Chipmunk)
- T. quadrimaculatus (Long-eared Chipmunk)
- T. quadrivittatus (Colorado Chipmunk)
- T. ruficaudatus (Red-Tailed Chipmunk)
- T. rufus (Hopi Chipmunk)
- T. senex (Allen's Chipmunk)
- T. sibiricus (Siberian Chipmunk)
- T. siskiyou (Siskiyou Chipmunk)
- T. sonomae (Sonoma Chipmunk)
- T. speciosus (Lodgepole Chipmunk)
- T. striatus (Eastern Chipmunk)
- T. townsendii (Townsend's Chipmunk)
- T. umbrinus (Uinta Chipmunk)
Pop Culture References
In 1958 Ross Bagdasarian (using the stage name David Seville, named after Seville, Spain) released "The Chipmunk Song" ("Christmas, Don't Be Late"), a sped-up recording of himself performing three-part harmony. The resulting high-pitched cartoony voices were named "Alvin", "Simon", and "Theodore" after executives at the record company which published the record. "The Chipmunk Song" went on to win two Grammy Awards and in 1961 lead to an animated television series, The Alvin Show. The characters substaintially regained popularity in the early 1980s with a new series, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and several direct-to-video releases in the 1990s, with Bagdasarian's son Ross, Jr. providing the voices of Dave, Alvin, and Simon, and his wife Janice Karman as the voice of Theodore.
In Disney's animated movie The Emperor's New Groove, character Krunk regularly converses with chipmunks, in their language of squeaks. Walt Disney also created two talking chipmunks, Chip and Dale, during the 1940's.
