An international team of researchers from Australia and China have shown that two related species of gigantic woolly flying squirrels, both previously unknown to science, occur in India and China.
- These have been named the Tibetan Woolly Flying Squirrel (Eupetaurus tibetensis) and the Yunnan Woolly Flying Squirrel (Eupetaurus nivamons).
- The Tibetan Woolly Flying Squirrel species is known from the southern Tibetan Plateau, in the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China and Sikkim in India.
- The woolly flying squirrel (Eupetaurus cinereus), one of the world’s rarest mammals, is found high in the Himalayan Mountains.
- Though known to scientists for almost 130 years, it was previously thought to be a single very rare species living mostly in remote valleys in Pakistan.
- These squirrels live at altitudes up to 4,800m (or 15,700 feet, more than half the height of Mt Everest), occur largely in areas uninhabited by people, and are some of the least known animals in the world, with only a handful of people having seen the mammal glide.
- The study was published on 31 May in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
