Flying squirrels go pink in ultraviolet (earthsky.org)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Eleanor Imster in Earth | February 12, 2019

A researcher using a UV flashlight to see whether some backyard frogs glow in the dark (they didn’t) happened to turn his light on a flying squirrel landing on a nearby bird feeder. He was met with a bright neon pink reflection.

Martin was using a UV flashlight – also called a black light – to see if frogs who lived in his woodsy Wisconsin back yard would glow in the dark. The frogs, turns out, do not glow. But when Martin happened to turn his flashlight on a flying squirrel as it touched down on a nearby bird feeder, he was met with a bright neon pink reflection. Martin told the Clearwater Times:

We have quite a few flying squirrels that come to the bird feeder and I just happened to be out there, heard it and didn’t even think that it was a UV light in my hand. I was like, ‘Holy smokes!’

Allison Kohler, a graduate student in the Texas A&M University wildlife and fisheries department, led the research to confirm the discovery, as well as affirm other flying squirrels do in fact fluoresce pink. The results were published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Mammology on January 29, 2019. Access to a museum collection at the Minnesota Science Museum helped the team investigate exactly what it was they had found. Kohler said in a statement:

I looked at a ton of different specimens that they had there. They were stuffed flying squirrels that they had collected over time, and every single one that I saw fluoresced hot pink in some intensity or another.

In addition, the team looked at specimens from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago as well as five additional live specimens. All confirmed their “pink theory.” After comparing the flying species to other squirrels, like the American red squirrel and gray squirrel, the team found that the pink color is unique to the flying squirrel.
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more: https://earthsky.org/earth/flying-squirrels-go-pink-in-ultraviolet

[Judi Lynn]

1. I had to see if more photos existed in google images of fluoresced Flying squirrels, no luck.

It appears the author of the posted article has the only living images of these beautiful little guys.

They seem to be extraordinarily cute in normal circumstances:







What amazing tiny ones.