[2][3] The common name originally may have been spelled "chitmunk", from the native Odawa (Ottawa) word jidmoonh, meaning "red squirrel" (cf.

In the mid-19th century, 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".

[9][10] They also commonly eat grass, shoots, and many other forms of plant matter, as well as fungi, insects and other arthropods, small frogs, worms, and bird eggs.

[9][10][11] Around humans, chipmunks can eat cultivated grains and vegetables, and other plants from farms and gardens, so they are sometimes considered pests.

[9] Cheek pouches allow chipmunks to carry food items to their burrows for either storage or consumption.

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 a vector for dispersal of the spores of subterranean sporocarps (truffles) in some regions.