Mystery Animal Contest: Who Is This Fluffy Beastie?

Mystery Animal: January 18, 2013 TBA (after winner is announced)

So, here are the rules: To answer, follow us on Twitter and tweet at us with the hashtag #mysteryanimal. For example:

Hey @PopSci, is the #mysteryanimal a baboon?

And then I might say "if you think that's a baboon, perhaps you are the baboon!" But probably not, because this is a positive environment and all guesses are welcome and also this is not a very common animal so guess whatever you want!

The first person to get it right wins! We'll retweet the answer from @PopSci, and also update this post so your amazing animal knowledge will be permanently etched onto the internet. Show your kids! Your dumb kids who thought that was a baboon!

Update: And the winner is...@xylem_n_phloem, who correctly guessed that this little fellow is a colugo, also known as a flying lemur. Specifically, this one is a Sunda flying lemur. Colugos are very fascinating creatures--they're gliders, like a flying squirrel or sugar glider, but aren't rodents or possums. Instead, they're the sole members of their entire family, because they are so unlike any other animal. We think they're an early branch of, believe it or not, the primates, which is why they're sometimes called "flying lemurs," though they are not, strictly speaking, lemurs. They're the most capable gliding mammals on the planet, able to glide over 200 feet with minimal loss in altitude. The Sunda flying lemur is found in southeast Asia.