Sumatran Flying Squirrel

Description: A small flying squirrel with a dark ring around each eye and a ‘cheek-beard’. It has tufts of thin (but rather stiff) hairs, up to 2 centimetres in length, on the sides of its head, behind its eyes. They arise from and near the foreedge of its ear and the part of the cheeks closely below it.

The hairs are directed partly straight upwards, partly more backwards. It also has long, but less stiff and more flat-lying hairs above the ear, and they can be found rather abundantly along the sides of its neck as far as about 2 centimetres up and behind its ears. The hairs on its underparts have long, white or slightly ochre-coloured tips, the ochre colour becoming clearer on the underside of its gliding membrane (though there are dark patches on the membrane near the armpit).

There is a light, pure ochrecoloured band underneath the outer margin of its membrane runs. Its tail is dark brown, its base lighter, and its upper side darker than its underside, with the tips of hairs darkest.

Distribution: Known only from the type locality in Aceh, northern Sumatra at 1200 metres.

Reproduction: Nothing is known.

Diet: Nothing is known.

Ecology: Nothing is known.

Status: Data Deficient.

Note: The species was originally described as Iomys winstoni after Winston Churchill ‘in honour of one of the greatest protectors of mankind and free science of our days’. It was subsequently placed in the genus Hylopetes.