First record of ultrasound communication in the mysterious Sunda colugo

In October last year, a team of scientists were out on a night hike surveying bats in the forests of the Penang Hill in the Malaysian state of Penang when their microphone picked up some unusual ultrasound calls — calls that were very different from the ultrasound calls of bats that the scientists were out to record. To the surprise of the researchers, the calls seemed to be coming from the Sunda colugo or the Sunda flying lemur (Galeopterus variegatus), a nocturnal mammal that’s not a lemur and does not fly. Instead, this tree-dwelling mammal glides from tree to tree using a gliding membrane that extends across its body. Until recently, the Sunda colugo was only known to produce calls in the audible range. But the calls recorded in the Penang Hill forests are the first record of ultrasound communication in these animals, researchers report in a new study published in Bioacoustics. “At first, when we recorded the calls, we could not see which animal it was from,” lead author Priscilla Miard of the University of Science, Malaysia, who was part of a 117-member team that surveyed Penang Hill’s biodiversity last year, said in an email. “One recording was really close to us and when I looked up I saw a colugo just a few meters in front of us on the tree trunk. After few seconds looking at it I understood the ultrasound was coming from this individual. I was amazed! It made a lot of sense but we needed more…

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