African giant squirrel

Mean oil palm squirrel ( Protoxerus stangeri )

The oil palm squirrel ( Protoxerus ) are a genus of squirrels of the African rain forests. They live mostly in the top region, and are therefore rarely seen. There are two different types:

• Mean oil palm squirrel, Protoxerus stangeri ( Waterhouse 1842), rainforests of West and Central Africa
• Slim tail Squirrel, Protoxerus aubinnii (Gray 1873), West Africa

Features

The congregation oil palm squirrel has a distribution that includes all the rain forests of Africa. It has a body length of 30 cm, added an approximately equally long tail. In color it is very variable: The back is olive brown to black colored; the cheeks and flanks are white; the underside is white to light brown. The tail can be black -and-white or black - brown banded or be a solid color. What is noticeable in this squirrel that the ventral side is sparsely hairy, so that they appear almost naked.

In contrast, the Slim squirrel tail is hairy normally even at the bottom. It is monochromatic gray-brown. Sometimes, but not always, a black dorsal stripe down the back pulls.

Way of life

Both types move briskly through the treetops and search for nuts and fruits. The eponymous preference to oil palm is only in those regions where these plants are also common. There you will find the squirrels often with orange patches on the skin that are caused by the sap of the oil palm fruit.

While the congregation oil palm squirrel one of the most common mammals of African rain forests, is about population numbers of slim tail squirrel unknown.

System

The Slim squirrel tail was occasionally also attributed to its own genus Allosciurus. Forsyth Major held the two types of oil palm squirrel for primitive members of the ground squirrel, so the today usual generic name Protoxerus ( Xerus the African ground squirrel ). With these they have but according to present knowledge to do nothing.