Black giant squirrel
Ratufa bicolor
— Where the name comes from
Bicolor states the obvious: above it is glossy black, below cream-yellow, and the boundary between the two is as sharp as a drawn line. It is countershading taken to an extreme — from below, against the bright sky between the leaves, the pale belly erases it.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Rodents
- Habitat
- Tropical and subtropical evergreen hill forest
- Range
- From eastern Nepal and Bengal to Vietnam, Malaysia, Java and Bali
- Size
- 35–58 cm of body, tail as long again, 1–1.5 kg
- Diet
- Fruit, seeds, buds, leaves, insects, eggs
- Lifespan
- 15 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It often eats hanging upside down, holding the food in its forepaws.
- 02
It gives a loud repeated call that betrays its presence at a distance.
- 03
It needs continuous forest canopy: it will not cross open clearings.
— What sets it apart
It has a problem the names do not mention: it cannot cross the road. Since it never comes down to the ground, a single carriageway or plantation is enough to split a population in two, and the fragments stay isolated for generations. That is why in South-East Asia rope bridges are built for it over forest roads, and camera traps show that it uses them: an animal that goes locally extinct for want of branches, not of food.
