Funambulus

Funambulus is a genus of squirrel and the only genus in the tribe Funambulini within the squirrel family Sciuridae. It contains six species of palm squirrel distributed across South Asia and Sri Lanka, including Layard's palm squirrel and the dusky palm squirrel of Sri Lanka, the Indian palm squirrel found in Sri Lanka and mainland South Asia, the Nilgiri striped palm squirrel of the southern Western Ghats, the jungle palm squirrel of southern India, and the northern palm squirrel found across most of South Asia, Pakistan and the Iranian highlands. The genus name comes from the Latin for rope dancer, a reference to the animals' agile, acrobatic movement through trees and vegetation. Funambulus squirrels are small, striped, and adapted to tropical and subtropical forest across the Indian subcontinent.