{"id":13427,"date":"2015-05-03T06:36:29","date_gmt":"2015-05-03T13:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=13427"},"modified":"2015-05-06T19:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T02:32:59","slug":"squirrel-stripes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=13427","title":{"rendered":"Squirrel stripes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The squirrel family (<span class=\"s2\">Sciuridae) is represented by\u00a0quite a few species\u00a0around the Lake: two of marmots, one tree squirrel, two ground squirrels, one flying squirrel, and one (maybe two) chipmunks. Only the chipmunks and the Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel sport stripes. Below, I show a picture of each seen on May 1<sup>st<\/sup>\u00a0in the sub-alpine forest high above the Lake.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>A curious aspect of having\u00a0two types of squirrels with\u00a0stripes\u00a0are the websites (usually touristy ones) which show a picture of a ground squirrel but label it as a chipmunk (the two aren&#8217;t even in the same genus). I wondered: How could this happen? Then it struck me: The construction of such sites is contracted to web designers who obtain their images from stock-photo services. So, I tested the idea by typing the word, <i>chipmunk<\/i>, into the search engines of a few different stock-photo websites. Yep, therein lies the source of the problem: a substantial number of the pictures labeled as chipmunks on such sites aren&#8217;t. It may be that a stock-image company isn&#8217;t such a reliable source of biological information.<\/p>\n<p>A\u00a0Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel is about four times the weight of a chipmunk. Stripes only appear on its back.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13428\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/goldenmandledgroundsquirrel150501as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A\u00a0chipmunk is not only much smaller, but its stripes extend from its back across its face to its nose.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13429\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/chipmunk150501s.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The squirrel family (Sciuridae) is represented by\u00a0quite a few species\u00a0around the Lake: two of marmots, one tree squirrel, two ground squirrels, one flying squirrel, and one (maybe two) chipmunks. Only the chipmunks and the Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel sport stripes. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=13427\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-mammals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13427"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13498,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13427\/revisions\/13498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}