#colugo

Malayan Colugo aka Sunda Flying Lemur (Galeopterus variegatus), family Cynocephalidae, order Dermoptera, Singapore

Despite the common name of this group, "flying lemur", these creatures are not lemurs, and are not closely related to lemurs.

They are closely related to primates.

Colugos are gliders, like gliding squirrels and sugar gliders, and do not actually fly.

Nocturnal and arboreal.

feed on a wide variety of leaves, flowers, and fruits.

In spec evo, there's a concept known as the "seed world" (or seed planet), a thought experiment where a planet capable of hosting life (usually from earth biology) is "seeded" with a few select organisms (and other starting conditions), and potential evolutionary-timescale outcomes of this are then speculated upon. For instance, what if there was a planet that was basically Earth as we know it except there's no vertebrates, and then someone adds a bunch of ducks? What niches would the ducks diversify into? Would any of them evolve into cool megafauna? What would it take for ducks to evolve into avian moles? Interesting stuff. But not what I'm doing here today.

Many of you will say that I was so preoccupied with the starting assumption that McDonaldland characters are species rather than individuals that I didn't stop to think if I should, and I agree. Anyway this is my seed world - "McDonaldland" - about 50 million years after a terraformed earthlike world was seeded with classic McDonaldland characters for an advertising stunt, part of a promotional tie-in with a movie about alien planets or something (records from this era are spotty at best). This stunt directly led to increased sales of McDonald's products for many Earth-years, but once the promotion was over the planet was filed away and forgotten about for around 50 million years.

We've got a towering therizinobirdie having a snack, a bunch of western lowland gorilmaces hanging out on a nice warm rock, and some apex predator descendents of fry kids fighting over a burgersnake, which we can tell is unhappy to be considered a meal. A trio of hamburlugos glide among the treetops, eyeing up the other burgersnakes as they slither away. Sadly, none of the lineages descending from clowns made it this far.

A young colugo, or Sunda flying lemur, in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.

I'll do one species of colugo (there are only two extant species).

Colugo/ Weird, fascinating animals

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