Oriental giant squirrels are very large tree squirrels from the genus Ratufa in the subfamily Ratufinae. They are a distinctive element of the fauna of south and southeast Asia.
There are four living species of oriental giant squirrels:
- Cream-coloured giant squirrel, Ratufa affinis
- Black giant squirrel, Ratufa bicolor
- Indian giant squirrel, Ratufa indica
- Grizzled giant squirrel, Ratufa macroura
In prehistoric times this lineage was more widespread. For example, animals very similar to Ratufa and possibly belonging to this genus - at least belonging to the Ratufinae - were part of the early Langhian (Middle Miocene, some 16-15.2 million years ago) Hambach fauna of Germany.
Famous quotes containing the words oriental, giant and/or squirrel:
“Behold the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental. The former has nothing to do in this world; the latter is full of activity. The one looks in the sun until his eyes are put out; the other follows him prone in his westward course.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The point of the dragonfly’s terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn’t ... but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“A squirrel leaping from bough to bough, and making the wood but one wide tree for his pleasure, fills the eye not less than a lion,—is beautiful, self-sufficing, and stands then and there for nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)