Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Rodentia > Sciuridae > Petaurista > Petaurista alborufus

Petaurista alborufus (red and white giant flying squirrel)

Synonyms: Pteromys alborufus (homotypic)

Wikipedia Abstract

The red and white giant flying squirrel (Petaurista alborufus) is a species of rodent in the family Sciuridae. It is the largest species of giant squirrel and has blue eyes.It is also known as the Chinese giant flying squirrel. At over a meter long including its tail, the red and white giant flying squirrel is the largest of its kind. Endemic to central and southern China and Taiwan, they inhabit dense hillside forests in mountainous terrain. They spend their days sleeping, emerging after sundown to forage in the trees. Their diet consists primarily of nuts and fruits, but also includes leafy vegetation as well as some insects and their larvae. Red and white giants move between trees by gliding, typically over distances of about 10–20 meters. This squirrel has a wide range and is relativel
View Wikipedia Record: Petaurista alborufus

Infraspecies

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
2
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
17
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 5.61
EDGE Score: 1.89

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  3.748 lbs (1.70 kg)
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Frugivore, Granivore, Herbivore
Diet - Fruit [2]  30 %
Diet - Invertibrates [2]  10 %
Diet - Plants [2]  30 %
Diet - Seeds [2]  30 %
Forages - Arboreal [2]  100 %
Litter Size [3]  1
Litters / Year [3]  2
Maximum Longevity [1]  21 years
Nocturnal [2]  Yes
Snout to Vent Length [3]  20 inches (50 cm)

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Indo-Burma Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Viet Nam No
Mountains of Southwest China China, Myanmar No

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Atopophthirus setosus[4]
Phthirunculus sumatranus[4]
Smitipsylla quadrata[5]

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
4Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
5International Flea Database
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0