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b'What better way to start out the new year than by learning about some animals that fly (or glide) without wings! Thanks to Llewelly for suggesting the colugo!\\n\\nColugo looking startled:\\n\\n\\n\\nA colugo, flying, which startles everyone else:\\n\\n\\n\\nFlying fish! ZOOM!\\n\\n\\n\\nA flying gurnard, not flying:\\n\\n\\n\\nFlying squid! ZOOM!\\n\\n\\n\\nFlying squid close-up, mid-zoom:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nIt\\u2019s the first week of a new year, so let\\u2019s start it off right and learn about some animals that fly without wings.\\n\\nThe first of our non-winged flying animals is a suggestion from Llewelly, who sent me some links about it and we both freaked out a little because it\\u2019s such an awesome animal. It\\u2019s called the colugo, and technically it doesn\\u2019t fly, it glides. It looks kind of like a big squirrel and kind of like a small lemur, and in fact it\\u2019s also sometimes called a flying lemur. But it\\u2019s not closely related to squirrels or lemurs. It\\u2019s actually not related closely to anything alive today.\\n\\nBefore we learn about the colugo specifically, let me explain a little bit about gliding animals. Gliding animals have a flap of skin called a gliding membrane or patagium. In the case of gliding mammals, like the flying squirrel or the colugo, the patagium connects each foreleg with the hindleg on that side. When the animal wants to glide, it stretches its legs out, which also stretches out the patagium. For a long time scientists assumed that the patagium was just skin and didn\\u2019t do anything except increase the animal\\u2019s surface area and act as a sort of parachute. But it turns out that the patagium contains tiny muscles like those recently discovered in the membranes of bat wings. And the skin between the fingers of the bat\\u2019s forelimbs, which creates the wings, are actually considered patagia. In fact, any gliding membrane, even if it\\u2019s part of a real wing, is considered a patagium, so birds actually have them too.\\n\\nThe colugo has a patagium between its legs like other gliding mammals, but it also has a patagium between its hind legs and its tail, and even its fingers and toes are connected with small patagia. It\\u2019s the most well-adapted mammal known for gliding, so well-adapted that it can glide incredible distances. One was measured as having glided almost 500 feet in one jump, or 150 meters. This is almost the length of two football fields.\\n\\nThe colugo lives in South Asia and is endangered mainly due to habitat loss. It grows to about 16 inches long, or 40 cm, with a small head, big eyes, and little round ears. It\\u2019s gray with some mottled white and black markings that help hide it against tree trunks, and its legs are long and slender. It eats plants. We don\\u2019t know a whole lot about the colugo, because it\\u2019s shy and lives in the treetops of tropical forests, but what we do know is really weird.\\n\\nFor instance, its babies. If you listened to episode 45 about monotremes, where we also discuss the differences between marsupial and placental mammals, you may remember that placental mammal babies are born mostly developed while marsupial mammal babies are born very early and finish developing outside of the mother, either in a pouch or just clinging to the mother\\u2019s fur. Well, the colugo is a placental mammal, but its babies are born extremely early, more like a marsupial. They finish developing outside of the mother, which takes six months or so, and the mother colugo keeps her tail curved up most of the time so that her patagium is wrapped around her babies like a pouch.\\n\\nThe colugo has weird teeth, too. The front teeth, or incisors, are shaped like tiny combs. This is similar to the incisors of lemurs, which look like tiny combs because the lemur uses them as tiny combs to groom its fur. But unlike any other mammal known, some of the colugo\\u2019s upper incisors have two roots instead of just one. Why? No one knows.\\n\\nSo what is the colugo related to? For a long time,'