Thirteen-lined ground squirrel

The thirteen-lined ground squirrel (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus) is a hibernating ground squirrel widely distributed over the grasslands and prairies of North America. It is brownish, with thirteen alternating brown and whitish lines along its back and sides, sometimes broken into rows of whitish spots. It was long placed in the large genus Spermophilus, but because that genus is paraphyletic to prairie dogs, marmots and antelope squirrels it was split into eight genera, leaving this species in Ictidomys with two others. It is strictly diurnal and most active on warm days, digs burrows with a deeper hibernation nest, and eats grass and weed seeds, caterpillars, grasshoppers and crickets, sometimes mice and shrews. Its bird-like trill is an alarm call used mostly by females to warn relatives. In hibernation it can last more than six months without food or water, alternating torpor bouts of seven to ten days with arousals of under a day.