Chinese giant flying squirrel

The Chinese giant flying squirrel (Petaurista xanthotis) is a rodent of the squirrel family Sciuridae and is endemic to China. It inhabits high-elevation spruce forests, nests in trees and does not hibernate. It is active at night, when it feeds on young shoots, leaves and pine nuts, and its litter averages two young. The species was first described by the zoologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards in 1872 under the name Pteromys xanthotis, from a type locality at Moupin in Baoxing, Sichuan, and it now sits in the genus Petaurista, the giant flying squirrels. The Mammal Diversity Database records it as living in the wild in the Palearctic realm, with a distribution confined to China, and lists its IUCN Red List status as Least Concern. Few details of its body size or lifespan are given in the sources read.