Talk:Flying squirrel

Revert
Note to anonymous user 128.223.208.174: Your edits on this page were factually incorrect and have been reverted. Flying squirrels neither have powered flight, nor are they capable of soaring. See any natural history book - or watch a flying squirrel. seglea 20:48, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Article name
Shouldn't this be at Flying squirrel? The article name isn't a formal title, and almost everything linked here is through the aforementioned redirect. --Slowking Man 06:25, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

There aren't any pictures!

I agree that it should be at Flying squirrel. --Aranae 00:59, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

Article scope
It seems to me that this article should deal specifically with the Petauristinae and that a link should go to the Anomaluridae. The anomalures are never in my experience called "flying squirrels", but are always called scaly-tailed flying squirrels, scaly-tails, or anomalures. Any comments on this proposal? --Aranae 00:59, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

Is this really a taxonomic group?
Is the "Petauristinae" really monophyletic? Given the number of times that gliding has evolved in small mammals, wouldn't it be just as likely that several different groups of squirrels in different parts of the world independently started gliding, rather than that they all form one group? john k 05:04, 23 August 2005 (UTC)


 * The Petauristinae is monophyletic, but the the Sciurinae is not. Flying squirrels evolved from within the other sciurids.  --Aranae 03:34, August 24, 2005 (UTC)


 * Huh. Why are they so strangely distributed, then? john k 03:40, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Petauristinae or Pteromyinae?
According to the Animal Diversity Web and the German and French correspondents to this page, the subfamily of flying squirrels is called Pteromyinae, not (as here) Petauristinae? Pteromyinae gets 481 Google hits and Petauristinae gets 605, which is probably not a significant difference. Is one more correct than the other? --Angr/undefined 18:43, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Boring picture?
Geez, you'd think people would expect something more than a mouse on a tree in a FLYING squirrel article. Come on, put up a picture of one that's actually FLYING.


 * Here you are:Flying SquirrelThis is a rather well-taken photograph. I have no idea how to put it up on the article. I am not a fan of scripting!<:-D Here is a strobe photo of a squirrel's launch, and other pics.


 * Haha, this is great! I remember a picture just like this one from our science book in 3rd grade. If I had any idea how this who wiki-whatchcallit worked I would put up this picture.

They don't fly. But, yes, there's also a nice picture of one gliding at e-nature.com. 'Cept I don't know how to put pictures on...61.230.72.211 09:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and flying squirrels are not mice.61.230.72.211 09:29, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I've replaced the previous photo of G. volans with one of a squirrel in flight. Does that look any better? —Michael Hays 00:40, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks better. Too bad we can't get more diversity than just Glaucomys, but the only other options are illustrations.  --Aranae 01:36, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Here's plenty of links: There. That should be enough. Dora Nichov 02:45, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
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 * This one's not gliding, but it's CUTE!
 * 

How does a flying squirrel meet it's four basic needs?
How does a flying squirrel meet it's four basic needs? You know AIR, WATER, SHELTER, AND FOOD.

Dora Nichov 08:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Air: They breathe like other mammals
 * Water: Not really sure, but I suppose they drink no different from others, though they may get most of their water from their food
 * Shelter: Flying squirrels live in hollow trees mostly
 * Food: They eat mostly nuts, berries, mushrooms, leaves, etc, but will often go for a bit of meat when they can get it - such as insects & slugs. Surprisingly for North America's smallest squirrel, the Southern Flying Squirrel, will sometimes attack voles and mice!

Volaticotherium
Volaticotherium was by no means a flying squirrel. It was a prehistoric mammal that was able to glide like flying squirrels, sugar gliders, colugos, and anomalures. If you read the Nature article, the authors describe it as capable of "gliding flight" and do not at all suggest it was capable of powered (true) flight. Unfortunately the press has twisted around the term "flight" and are implying that it could fly in the same sense that birds can fly which is not true based on the original article. Also it was not a sciurid, rodent, or even eutherian, but instead falls evolutionarily basal among the Theria. Its connection to flying squirrels is merely that it convergently evolved a similar gliding mechanism. Stating that flying squirrels flew before birds is absolutely false as Volaticotherium is equally closely related to flying squirrels, humans, bats, whales, and kangaroos. A link to the Volaticotherium article in a "see also" section or a discussion of it in the context of the evolution of gliding in mammals would be a reasonable addition to this article, but the recent added statement is simply false and I am reverting it again. --Aranae 02:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Norturnalism
No mention of nocturnalism and their enormous eyes? The species of flying squirrel where I live display both. The first time I saw one I was frightened half to death!! Pendragon39 23:59, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Lifespan
When you say "the lifespan is 3 years but in captivity up to 15 because they're such important prey animals" you're confusing lifespan with life expectancy. Lifespan is a maximum, life expectancy is an average that utilizes the mortality rate. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.72.21.221 (talk) 05:42, 10 March 2007 (UTC).

flying squirrels as pets
The statement that flying squirrels have been kept as pets since colonial times seems to be incomplete. As far as I know, the aboriginal peoples of North America kept them as pets long before Europeans arrived.

I might also add that the article only scratches the surface of what can be written about flying squirrels. WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 15:31, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Sugar Gliders
why doesn't the article mention anything the nickname "Sugar Gliders" that's what I grew up knowing of them as. Arkkeeper (talk) 00:31, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Sugar gliders are an australian thing. They aren't squirrels. 121.45.204.14 (talk) 01:38, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Behavior
The otherwise badly written and unreferenced section "behavior" contained these lines of what I presume is vandalism that I removed:
 * Flying squirrels are the oldest line of squirrels around. The modern squirrels have evolved from the flying squirrel. The southern flying squirrel emigrated to North America over the Bering Land Bridge from Asia.

1) This doesn't belong in "behavior", 2) It contradicts what is said on the grey and red squirrel pages, which mention evolution from ground squirrels, 3) it is not referenced. Jalwikip (talk) 09:13, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the fix. It is not completely false; flying squirrel fossils are among the oldest squirrels and have been suggested as ancestral to the others. I would be interested to see where it says that other squirrels evolved from ground squirrels, which as far as I know is certainly false. Ucucha 12:53, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Life Span
flying squirrels live up to 15 years in captivity and 6 years out of captivity —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.215.100.238 (talk) 23:28, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Flying squirrels and their mating season, and time for giving birth!
MANY species of flying squirrels live in Southeast Asia, which includes Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Borneo (divided into three countries) - equatorial places that include islands that are crossed by the Equator, such as Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes (now called Sulawesi by some people), and Halmahera (all four being partly or completely in Indonesia) - plus the Equator runs just north of New Guinea. Anyway, how can flying squirrels there tell when it is February or March? I don't think that they can in that equatorial region. Hence, identifying February and March as the mating season for flying squirrels is a bunch of baloney.

By the way, Singapore is nearly precisely one degree of latitude north of the Equator, and it is a quite tropical and uncomfortable place w/o air conditioning. Jakarta, Bangkok, and Borneo are even worse.98.81.0.114 (talk) 15:49, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect image when link is shared
The photo that appears when you share the link of the flying squirrel is not a flying squirrel at all. It is a photo of a red squirrel. Although very similar, not the same.

Please help me with this post as it is my first time using Talk pages and may not have a handle of the procedures required to make a change. I would appreciate some coaching and my knowledge of squirrels and birds would be helpful. I am a photographer and although I do not have a clear photo of the flying squirrel taken with my big girl camera. The flying squirrel is nocturnal which makes it a little more difficult to capture a proper image.

I would like to upload an image I have of a flying squirrel eating at my bird feeders, but cannot seem to figure out how to do this. It is not a wonderful image, but does show the larger eyes (due to it being nocturnal) and the flat tail which are traits to easily identity the mamal.

copied from the internet

Roxane Bay roxane.bay@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.222.130.198 (talk) 14:58, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Flying squirrel. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:
 * Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.northern.edu/natsource/MAMMALS/Northe1.htm

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 23:44, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Two items for inclusion
Where are they found?

What is their glide ratio (forward distance divided by descent distance)?

Loraof (talk) 02:29, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Temporal range - originated some 18–20 million years ago vs early Oligocene
The sentence in the text of the article is in contradiction with the information in the taxobox: according to the latter, the group's temporal range is from the early Oligocene (the Oligocene "extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present" - quote from its article), while the text of this article states that "Molecular studies have shown that flying squirrels are ... originated some 18–20 million years ago." Can someone get a source for either of these and clarify the situation?

Winston (talk) 07:25, 25 May 2021 (UTC)