![]() However, if you are planning on keeping rescued wild chipmunks, you may find that they catch and eat insects, worms, and other small creatures that they find in their outdoor cage or enclosure. However, you may find that feeding captive-bred chipmunks wrigglers simply won’t work! They enjoy strawberries, blackberries, tomatoes, corn, and squash – to name a few. The veggies and fruits in a chipmunk’s diet do mirror much of what humans eat. Wild chipmunks can wreak havoc in domestic gardens, laying waste to fruits and vegetables that are left unprotected. If you are obtaining your pet chipmunks from a pet store, ask where they come from originally and do some detective work on the kinds of foods they would have access to in nature. So, if you are intending to keep rescued wild chipmunks from your local area, you’ll need to do some research into what kinds of foods would be naturally available to them. For example, wild southern chipmunks may have access to a peanuts and pecans, whereas others may only have acorns or pine nuts available. To a certain extent, what chipmunks eat will depend on the species and on where they originate from. What do chipmunks eat when kept as pets?įor your chipmunks to remain happy and healthy, it’s important that you feed them a diet that is kept as close as possible to what they would eat in the wild. Their harvesting and hoarding activities help to spread tree, fungi, and plant seeds around their habitat, helping the woodland to flourish. Chipmunks – the farmers of the forest!Ĭhipmunks perform a very important function in the forest ecosystem. And they can actually stretch to become three times larger than the chipmunk’s head – awesome! Chipmunks use their pouches to transport items of food back to their nest or burrow.ĭo chipmunks eat acorns? You bet! They love those nuts, and acorns provide a good amount of nutrition for chipmunks. You may have seen pictures of cartoon chipmunks with bulging cheek pouches! These pouches are used just like grocery bags to transport items of food. They will sleep for a few days, emerging briefly to nibble on some of their larder items, before going to sleep again for another brief period, and so on until spring. Instead, at the beginning of fall, these industrious little critters harvest and stockpile non-perishable foods in their burrows to keep them well-fed over winter when food is scarce. Unlike bears and other hibernating mammals, chipmunks do not build up large stores of body fat to see them through the winter. Wild chipmunks do not technically hibernate, but they do spend much of the winter months in a largely dormant, torpid state. They also bury food items such as nuts, returning to collect their cache later. Rather than sitting in the open where they could be vulnerable to predation, chipmunks like to collect food and take it back to their burrow. So if you were wondering, “Do chipmunks eat acorns?” the answer is definitely yes. In fact, according to National Geographic, a single chipmunk can gather up to 165 acorns in a single day! In between resting and napping, these busy little creatures spend much of their day foraging on the ground, although they will also climb trees to feed on acorns and nuts. It is not unheard of to see a chipmunk eating a snake! Natural feeding behaviorĪlthough they are mainly forest or woodland dwellers and are adept climbers, wild chipmunks choose to live in underground burrows, hollow tree logs, or in nests built in thick bushes.Ĭhipmunks are crepuscular, being mainly active at dawn and dusk when there are fewer predators to threaten them. As well as the veggie option, chipmunks will happily tuck into small frogs, insects, earthworms, bird eggs, baby birds, and even arthropods such as millipedes and centipedes. In addition, chipmunks eat fresh grass and new plant shoots. You will see a wild chipmunk eating nuts, seeds, buds, fruit, grains, and fungi. In the wild, chipmunks have a very varied diet. This means that they eat both plants and foods of animal origin. In fact, chipmunks can feel right at home anywhere there are trees! So, what do chipmunks like to eat? These little rodents are omnivorous. With the exception of the Siberian chipmunk that is found across northern Asia from central Russia to China, all the other varieties are all found widespread right across North America. What do chipmunks eat?Ĭhipmunks are members of the squirrel family. So, let’s start by looking at the diet of wild chipmunks. In order to choose the correct chipmunk food for your pet critters, it’s very important that you have an understanding of what chipmunks prefer to eat in the wild. And to get you off to a flying start we’ve included reviews of a few of our favorite pet chipmunk foods that you can purchase online! We’ve also included convenient links to the products, so ordering the right supplementary diet for your pet chipmunks couldn’t be easier! ![]()
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