A new species of flying squirrel has been discovered in North America

There used to only be two species in flying squirrels in North America, the Northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus) and the southern flying squirrel (Glaucomys volans). The northern flying squirrel is found mainly in Alaska and Canada, but can only be found in California and the surrounding states. The southern flying squirrel is ironically not found in the southers part, but rather on the east coast, and pretty much all of the half eastern part of the United States.

A northern flying squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus). Image by Bob Cherry, posted as Public Domain.

However, a new research paper has just been published that indicated another unknown species of flying squirrel in North America, and it has been hiding in plain sight the whole time! This new flying squirrel is known as Humboldt's flying squirrel (Glaucomys oregonensis), and it has probably been living along with the northern flying squirrels in the area of California since the Ice Age! This means that it has been available to study ever since then, but no one had actually known it was two species of flying squirrels is California until now!

How did it go unnoticed for so long?

The main reason why it went unnoticed is the fact that the two flying squirrel species look a whole lot like each other. The small differences between them was shrugged off as just being morphological differences in the species, but once researchers started to take DNA samples they quickly realizes that it was two completely different species.

No one really knows the entire range of the habitat of the new Humboldt's flying squirrel yet, but there will for sure be lots of studies of this new species in the next few years. The conclusion is that the North America now has three known flying squirrel species, but who knows if there might be more hidden species among the known ones?

About the author

Hi, I’m @valth! I live in Norway with my girlfriend, our newborn son, and our two dogs, one of which is seen wearing a bow tie in the profile picture!

I am very passionate about nature and biology, and have been studying ecology for a few years now. My passions are mostly within conservation biology, mycology (the studies of mushrooms), animal behavior and general microbiology. I really enjoy both the theoretical aspect, as well as the more practical aspect of biology, and I spend about as much time in front of biology textbooks as I do spend on finding and identifying plant, mushroom and animal species in the forests.