Imagine a squirrel which is one meter in length, covered in long fur, and easily flies for one-hundred meters.
ABC: The woolly flying squirrel: On the trail of the world's largest glider
The beauty part is he was thought to be extinct for years but he's just turned up again in his native range in Pakistan.
The other unusual thing about the woolly flying squirrel is its scream, which has been likened by some to the sound of a yeti.
"The way it was described to me was of a chain smoking child falling off a cliff. It's quite unnerving," says Peter Zahler, regional director of the Asia program for the Wildlife Conservation Society, a field conservation group run out of the Bronx Zoo in New York.
- RT
Professor Zahler has a genius for imagery, doesn't he. I wasn't aware anyone knows what a yeti sounds like but the idea of a 'chain-smoking child falling off a cliff' is one which is like something we would expect from Shakespeare. We can only hope Zahler writes poetry.
Regrettably, there's no video of them flying but it's not for lack of trying.
Dr Dinets observed the two squirrels gliding, eating and chattering to each other. He witnessed them gliding from tree to tree rapidly and without sound. When they landed, they quickly ran to the other side of the tree, an owl avoidance strategy.
That there are owls big enough to disembowel a flying mammal one metre long gives an idea of the hostility of the Himalayan environment.
Despite his best efforts, the video camera that Dr Dinets had with him could not focus through the snow and the darkness of the Himalayan night. The images he managed to get of the squirrel were very blurry.
"They simply leap over from the cliff edge and make a huge loop over the canyon. There is a big glacier below and you can see them flying in the moonlight above the glacier. They do a big loop and land somewhere on the cliff close to their den.
"They probably flew out at least 50 metres, maybe 100.
- RT
How about leaving it there with the image of huge flying squirrels soaring over a glacier in the moonlight.
ABC: The woolly flying squirrel: On the trail of the world's largest glider
The beauty part is he was thought to be extinct for years but he's just turned up again in his native range in Pakistan.
The other unusual thing about the woolly flying squirrel is its scream, which has been likened by some to the sound of a yeti.
"The way it was described to me was of a chain smoking child falling off a cliff. It's quite unnerving," says Peter Zahler, regional director of the Asia program for the Wildlife Conservation Society, a field conservation group run out of the Bronx Zoo in New York.
- RT
Professor Zahler has a genius for imagery, doesn't he. I wasn't aware anyone knows what a yeti sounds like but the idea of a 'chain-smoking child falling off a cliff' is one which is like something we would expect from Shakespeare. We can only hope Zahler writes poetry.
Regrettably, there's no video of them flying but it's not for lack of trying.
Dr Dinets observed the two squirrels gliding, eating and chattering to each other. He witnessed them gliding from tree to tree rapidly and without sound. When they landed, they quickly ran to the other side of the tree, an owl avoidance strategy.
That there are owls big enough to disembowel a flying mammal one metre long gives an idea of the hostility of the Himalayan environment.
Despite his best efforts, the video camera that Dr Dinets had with him could not focus through the snow and the darkness of the Himalayan night. The images he managed to get of the squirrel were very blurry.
"They simply leap over from the cliff edge and make a huge loop over the canyon. There is a big glacier below and you can see them flying in the moonlight above the glacier. They do a big loop and land somewhere on the cliff close to their den.
"They probably flew out at least 50 metres, maybe 100.
- RT
How about leaving it there with the image of huge flying squirrels soaring over a glacier in the moonlight.
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