The Colugo: flying lemurs that aren’t flying lemurs at all
This bizarre animal is as confused as we are!
When typing the word ‘colugo’ into Google you’ll get two things:
- A flying mammal that has a permanent look of sheer terror on its face
- A brand of stroller for bebbies
Do you think the stroller company asked this southeast asian mammal for permission to use its name for their pushchair? I’m guessing the answer is no — poor colugos!
I also don’t know how a pushchair relates to this creature in any way. But the brand must consider the colugo to be pretty cool — and here’s the facts to back this up.
They aren’t actually lemurs
Although they resemble lemurs, if you paid attention to the film Madagascar with King Julian you should already know that lemurs only exist in Madagascar. Colugos’ closest living relatives are actually primates.
The flying is also a lie
Taxonomists seem to get their kicks from naming animals inaccurately just to fool us all. These ‘flying lemurs’ glide instead of flying — a fur-covered membrane allows colugos to swoop gracefully between trees. They can glide for distances of up to 200 metres.
They think they’re kangaroos
Colugos might be mammals, but they raise their young like marsupials — they make pouches out of their flying membranes and raise their young by swaddling them in these pouches. It’s weirdly adorable.
Certain species communicate via ultrasound
It turns out this gliding lemur/primate/kangaroo/I don’t know anymore is able to communicate via high frequency sounds that we can’t hear. This was discovered in recent years when scientists linked ultrasound calls to the Sunda Colugo. But as they don’t use echolocation to locate their food, it was concluded that they were probably calling to warn of the presence of humans. I think it’s possible they use ultrasound to bitch about us to their colugo friends in the trees.
One more thing — they also think they’re frogs!
Because they have webbed feet. This animal is definitely having the biggest identity crisis of any I’ve seen… but y’know what, who cares? The colugo is incredible because it has evolved so many awesome features and if they’re happy, that’s all that matters.
Thank you for reading!
I hope you enjoyed this article — to learn more about the bizarre and adorable animals of the world, please follow!
