Chipmunks, Seeds, and Saliva

Least chipmunk

Chipmunks are a kind of small squirrel, found mostly in western North America. Spending the winter in underground burrows, they are more related to ground squirrels, such as prairie dogs and marmots, than they are to tree squirrels, such as the ubiquitous eastern grey. They share a lot of features in common with other squirrels, and I doubt it's much of a surprise to anyone that this is, indeed, what they are.

One thing they have in common with other squirrels is their habit of hoarding food. In fact, their scientific name, Tamias, is Greek for something like "steward" or "treasurer", implying an animal that carefully looks after its food stores. As with other squirrels, since they don't truly hibernate, this habit helps them to survive through the winter, especially in the colder or drier climates in which many of them live.

There is something of an art to this, since chipmunks (and squirrels in general) are no great respecters of property rights. If they can find somebody else's cache of food, they'll be in there like a shot.

They don't even particularly care if the cache was left by a member of their own species or not. If the owner is the same species as yourself then, well, he's probably a rival, since chipmunks aren't especially sociable. If, on the other hand, he isn't, then that's even less of an issue, since they all eat broadly the same kind of seeds and small nuts. This, however, leads to a problem - sure, you may be able to pinch his food, but what's to stop him pinching yours?

The trick, then, is to try and find somewhere to hide your food that's easy for you to remember, but hard for anyone else to guess. A bit like the password on your bank account, then. Not all chipmunks, it turns out, are equally good at this. Let's take a look, for example, at the two most widespread American species.