You can recognize a yellow pine chipmunk by the stripes on each side of its face (three dark and two light) as well as its back (five dark and four light). If stripes are only on the back but not the face, you're looking at a golden-mantled ground squirrel instead. If dark stripes don't extend all the way from nose to eye, it's a Townsend's chipmunk.

Widely distributed across the northwest of America, you'll find yellow pine chipmunks in a range of habitats from meadows to forest. You're likely to see these active and inquisitive creatures foraging, begging, or cleaning themselves via dust baths and washing their faces.

Chipmunks do not build body fat before hibernation, so must wake periodically to eat stored seeds.

Unusually for a mammal, females are larger than males.