Missing for 42 years, flying squirrel resurfaces in Arunachal

Subject : Environment

Section: Species in news

Context:

A nocturnal flying squirrel has resurfaced in Arunachal Pradesh after going missing for 42 years. It was last recorded in the Namdapha Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh’s Changlang district.
The Aaranyak study was supported by Re:Wild, a global wildlife conservation organisation, and the Small Mammal Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Species Survival Commission.

Namdapha flying squirrel (Biswamoyopterusbiswasi):

They are an arboreal, nocturnal flying squirrelendemic to Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India, where it is known from a single specimen collected in Namdapha National Park in 1981.
It was the sole member in the genus Biswamoyopterus until the description of the Laotian giant flying squirrel (Biswamoyopteruslaoensis) in 2013.
What sets the Namdapha flying squirrel apart from the red giant flying squirrel is the prominent tuft of hair on the ears of the former.

Red giant flying squirrel (Petauristapetaurista):

It is a species of rodent in the family Sciuridae (squirrels).
It is found in a wide variety of forest–types, plantations and more open habitats with scattered trees in Southeast Asia, ranging north to the Himalayas and southern and central China.
One of the largest arboreal squirrels, all populations have at least some reddish-brown above and pale underparts, but otherwise, there are significant geographic variations in the colours.
Mostly nocturnal and able to glide (not actually fly like a bat) long distances between trees by spreading out its patagium, skin between its limbs.
It is a herbivore and the female has one, infrequently two, young per litter.
It is not a threatened species.