Eastern Chipmunk

by Richard Reeve

Title

Eastern Chipmunk

Artist

Richard Reeve

Medium

Photograph - Photograph

Description

Chipmunks are small, striped rodents of the family Sciuridae. All species of chipmunks are found in North America, with the exception of the Siberian chipmunk, which is found primarily in Asia.

The common name originally may have been spelled "chitmunk," from the native Odawa (Ottawa) word jidmoonh, meaning "red squirrel" (cf. Ojibwe, ajidamoo). The earliest form cited in the Oxford English Dictionary (from 1842) is "chipmonk," however, "chipmunk" appears in several books from the 1820s and 1830s. Other early forms include "chipmuck" and "chipminck," and in the 1830s they were also referred to as "chip squirrels;" probably in reference to the sound they make. In the mid-1800s, John James Audubon and his sons, included a lithograph of the chipmunk in their Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, calling it the "Chipping Squirrel [or] Hackee." Chipmunks have also been referred to as "striped squirrels," "chippers," "munks," "timber tigers," or "ground squirrels" (although the name "ground squirrel" usually refers to other squirrels, such as those of the genus Spermophilus).

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 symbiotic mycorrhizal associations with trees, and are an important vector for dispersal of the spores of subterranean sporocarps (truffles) which have co-evolved with these and other mycophagous mammals and thus lost the ability to disperse their spores through the air.

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The Light Painters - 09/23/2014

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September 21st, 2014

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