Groove-toothed flying squirrel

The groove-toothed flying squirrel, Aeretes melanopterus, is a rodent in the family Sciuridae that is also called the colorful flying Chinese squirrel and, by the Mammal Diversity Database, the northern Chinese flying squirrel. It is the only living species in the genus Aeretes, which also holds two extinct species. The species is endemic to China and occurs in Sichuan, Gansu, Hebei and Beijing, where its natural habitat is temperate forest. It was first described by A. Milne-Edwards in 1867 under the name Pteromys melanopterus, from a specimen collected in the mountains of Hebei Province. The database places it in the tribe Pteromyini of the subfamily Sciurinae, lists it as living and found in the wild, and gives its IUCN Red List status as Least Concern.