This clip has been making the social media rounds, and I can’t stop watching it. The way the thing is able to stabilize in flight, then braces for the landing:
That’s a sugar glider, a marsupial native to Australia, and the skin folds that enable it to glide are called the patagium.
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Evolution is a strange thing, and other non-related animals in other parts of the world also have patagia. For instance, in North America and parts of northern Europe they’ve got flying squirrels with patagia, and those are rodents, not marsupials:
This little guy is called the Sulawesi Lined Gliding Lizard, native to Indonesia, and it’s obviously a reptile:
Then there’s the Colugo, a/k/a the Flying Lemur, which is a mammal:
Mother Colugo carrying her baby
Colugos may look evil and scary, but they’re actually not dangerous at all. These guys below, however, are:
Source: core77