The Indian Giant Squirrel Is Almost Too Beautiful To Be Real

When squirrel expert John Koprowski first saw a Malabar giant squirrel, also known as an Indian giant squirrel, he couldn’t believe his eyes.John was visiting India in 206 and first thought that the animal looked more like a primate than a squirrel due to its massive size.However, this giant animal was no primate – just a very, very large squirrel. They are two times the size of an eastern grey squirrel and can be 36 inches long.

Malabar giant squirrels rarely visit the ground and live high up in the forest canopy, jumping and leaping from tree to tree – sometimes with leaps over 20-feet!The chances of a sighting of one of these animals in the wild are quite slim.Not only would you have to travel to eastern or southern India, but then you'd have to travel deep into the forest in hopes of a rare glimpse."They are pretty shy," Pizza Ka Yee Chow, squirrel expert and research fellow at Hokkaido University, told The Dodo."One of my friends who lives in India shared with me that the best way to see these giant squirrels is to climb up on a tree, stay very quiet and wait for them to emerge from their [nest]."(Source: Yashas Shettigar/YouTube)