KUCHING: A video that showed what looked like a flying lemur at a residential area went viral on social media recently.
In the one-minute-seventeen-second video, it looked like the animal was tied to a tree branch, and was making painful sounds as if it was struggling to escape.
The video had been forwarded to the Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC) to check whether the incident happened in the state or elsewhere.
“We are investigating this case and will issue a media release after this,” SFC told New Sarawak Tribune yesterday.
Towards the end of the video, a lady had asked it to be released, to which a boy replied, “How to let it go, it will bite people.”
According to information on the Forest Department Sarawak’s (FDS) website, there are only two flying lemurs or colugos, one confined to the southern Philippines and the other to Borneo and other parts of Southeast Asia.
It said the animal species cannot fly, but often glide between trees with the aid of membranes between the legs.
Their teeth are highly specialised and unlike those of any other mammal. There are no teeth at the front of the upper jaw but just two pairs of lower front teeth that look like finely-toothed combs.
The animal is sometimes active in the morning and late afternoon and is usually noticed when clinging to the side of a tree trunk or gliding between tall trees.
It would rest either in tree holes or in the crowns of trees, and would feed on sap from plants, leaves, leaf shoots and flower buds.
It also said most colugos are grey with heavy black and white markings, but some individuals are tinged reddish-brown or are totally reddish-brown with few markings.
Similar species to these flying lemurs is the large flying squirrel.
