Gliding mammals such as flying squirrels stretch a membrane between wrist and ankle. A colugo goes further: the patagium spans the shoulders and fore paws, encloses the fingers and toes with webbing, and continues to the tail tip, leaving almost no gap in the airfoil. Colugos are thought to be better adapted for gliding than any other mammal, and they travel as far as about seventy metres between trees without losing much altitude, with one Sunda colugo recorded gliding roughly 150 metres.
The cost is paid on the ground and in the trees. A colugo lacks opposable thumbs, climbs by hitching upward in slow hops, and moves poorly on the ground. A female carries her single young folded into the membrane, which she curls into a warm quasi-pouch.
The name flying lemur is doubly wrong. Colugos glide rather than fly, and they are not primates; molecular work places their order Dermoptera as the closest living relatives of primates, which is a different and more interesting statement.