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Facts About Chipmonks
Chipmonk, your host on this website is an amazing creature, but real chipmunks, are pretty cool too. They're very fast and curious, chittering and chirping, and running around on the ground searching for food. Chipmonks can be very bold and in areas where they are used to seeing people often run right up to demand a treat or to explore all the interesting people stuff at a camp site.
How do you spell chipmunk? Chipmonk is the name of your host for this web site, but the correct way to spell the name of those little furry rodents with racing stripes is"chipmunk".Originally the name was "chit-monk." That's what the Algonquin Indians of Eastern North America called them, but the white folks miss-pronounced it.
Chipmunks are members of the order rodentia or rodents, which is the largest order with 1,500 living species. Like all rodents, they have four long front teeth for gnawing. They are related to squirrels and ground squirrels. Squirrels--the kind who live in trees--are much larger and have those big, bushy tails. Ground squirrels look more like chipmunks and live on the ground too, but they do not have stripes on their faces and are larger.
Red Squirrel
Eastern Chipmunk
Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel
All chipmunks are from the genus tamias. Your host, Chipmonk's scientific name is Tamias striatus, the Eastern Chipmunk, but there are twenty-one different kinds of chipmunks and they all live in North America except for one, Tamias, sibericus, which lives in China.
Chipmonks live a long time for rodents. Males live about five years; females about nine. Chipmonk mothers have on average five babies around May. In warm climates chipmonks may produce two litters a year.Their eyes open when they are around a month old and by the time they are seven weeks old they are able to go out of the burrow to learn how to survive from their mother. By fall they are ready to be on their own.
Chipmunk Facts
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