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Night Gliders: The Flying Squirrel
| Article
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11422 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1986 |
771 Words |
| Author
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Nancy M. Wells
Nancy M. Wells is the editor and science writer at the
Illinois State Museum and a doctoral candidate in natural
resources at the University of Michigan. |
The sliver of an autumn moon barely illuminates the nighttime woods. Crisp leaves crunch beneath your feet, revealing every step. If you pause to listen, you may hear the piercing "tsepp, tsepp" of a flying squirrel in a hickory tree high above you. Moving toward the sound, you are likely to find small fragments falling from above. The squirrel is harvesting hickory nuts. It has cut a nut from the tree with its incisors and is now tearing off the thick husk whose discarded pieces are clattering down through the branches.
Crouching on the branch while holding the nut in its teeth, the squirrel peers through the darkness as if straining to see the landing site; then it launches into the air with a powerful push of its hind legs. Stretching out its fore and hind legs, with a flap of skin called the patagium extended between them, the animal is transformed into a flattened airfoil resembling a kite, with a feather like tail trailing behind. In a spiraling glide, the graceful flier drops fifty feet and lands on the tree trunk a few feet above the ground.
Still clenching the nut in its teeth, the squirrel hops to the ground where it digs a small hole in the dirt beneath the leaf litter, implants the nut, then neatly covers it with the dirt and the litter. Task completed, the squirrel disappears up the tree trunk into the darkness.
Although few people ever see flying squirrels, these relatives of tree squirrels are not uncommon in many parts of the world. The eastern North American flying squirrel (Glaucomys volans) is found predominantly in deciduous forests east of the Great Plains, with a few isolated populations in Mexico. The other North American species, appropriately called the northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus), lives in northern forests of the eastern United States, throughout Canada, and in much of the forested portion of the western United States.
Flying squirrels are not confined to the North American continent. Thirty-three species occur in Asia, where it is thought that flying squirrels evolved. There are no true flying squirrels in Australia, but small marsupials, called sugar gliders, fill the niche of nocturnal glider. In Africa another family of squirrel-like mammals, the Anomaluridae, are forest-dwelling gliders.
Flying squirrels eat nuts, seeds, and other fruits, supplemented by tree buds and insects. Some species favor fungi and lichens. In the fall, flying squirrels cache food for use during the
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