colugo

colugo (kuh-LOO-goh) - n., either of two nocturnal arboreal mammals (Cynocephalus volans of the Philippines and C. variegatus of southeast Asia and Indonesia) that make long gliding leaps between trees using a flap of skin between its limbs.


Also called flying lemurs, though they aren't lemurs but rather a sister-clade to primates. The name dates from the 1880s, alteration of earlier colago, the name introduced by Jesuit missionary and naturalist Jiří Josef Kamel (1661-1706), who met them in the Philippines and claimed this was the name in Visayan (group of languages related to Tagalog), though no such Visayan source has been identified and dictionaries generally throw up their hands and claim it's from "a Malayo-Polynesian language."


Thanks, WikiMedia!


And that's a week of beasts -- back next week with the usual random assortment of lexemes. Though maaaaaybe I could be talked into a round of fish names that are (almost?) as fun as sarcastic fringehead sometime soon.

---L.

---L.