The 21 Basic Mammal Groups
Colugos (Order Dermoptera)
Never heard of colugos? Well, there's a good reason: there are only two living colugo species in the world today, both residing in the dense jungles of southeast Asia. Colugos are characterized by the wide flaps of skin extending from their forelimbs, which enable them to glide 200 feet from tree to tree in a single journey. This is far beyond the capabilities of similarly-equipped flying squirrels, which are only distantly related to colugos. Oddly enough, while molecular analysis has demonstrated that colugos are the closest living relatives of our own mammalian order, the primates, their child-rearing behavior most closely resembles that of marsupials.
The 21 Basic Mammal Group caches were placed for HNY21.