Sep
8
2009
Canadian Wildlife, Chipmunks
Author: RockyOne of my favourite and definitely one of the cutest creatures you’ll see out and about when you visit Canada – is the fluffy little workaholic, foodaholic chipmunk!
A Chipmunk stuffing an entire monkey nut into its mouth
Chipmunks are some of the most daring critters you’ll ever meet, and you probably thought squirrels were pretty daring. Some chipmunks you may know are Alvin, Simon and Theodore – or maybe even Disney’s Chip and Dale. It seems fitting that these lively and entertaining little critters have been animated, because when you come across one you’ll likely see the characters you see on TV being acted out in front of you!
The same chipmunk with two whole nuts stuffed in his mouth
Eastern chipmunks mate in early spring and again in early summer, producing litters of four or five young twice each year. Western chipmunks only breed once a year. The young emerge from the burrow after about six weeks and strike out on their own within the next two weeks. Chipmunks have an omnivorous diet consisting of grain, nuts, birds’ eggs, small frogs, fungi, worms, and insects. At the beginning of 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.
These small mammals fulfill several important functions in forest ecosystems. Their activities harvesting and hoarding tree seeds play a crucial role in seedling establishment. They consume many different kinds of fungi, including those involved in coexistent associations with trees, and are an important vector for dispersal of the spores of truffles which have co-evolved with these and other mammals and thus lost the ability to disperse their spores through the air.
Chipmunks play an important role as prey for various predatory mammals and birds, but are also opportunistic predators themselves, particularly with regard to bird eggs and nestlings.
Chipmunks construct expansive burrows which can be more than 3.5 m in length with several well-concealed entrances. The sleeping quarters are kept extremely clean as shells and feces are stored in refuse tunnels.
So there you have it! The sweet little chipmunk, keep your eyes open for them scurrying around in the grass while you’re out in Canada!
