What animal is this?

Factual Questions
1

A friend is trying to identify an animal from a photo, unfortunately I have no more context than the link to the image:

http://www.orientaldiscovery.com/UpLoadFiles/20111125/2011112511003585X.jpg

Any ideas? Thanks!

2

It looks like a dirty Chinchilla to me.

3

To me it looks quite a bit like the beaver pictured here.

4

Look at the tails…

5

The ears look to short for a chinchilla and the face a little short but chinchilla is the closest I can come up with.

6

I would guess a young woodchuck.

7

Apparently it’s something from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

8

Isn’t this supposed to be a Chinese animal? Since the original page is: OrientalDiscovery.com is for sale | HugeDomains

I looked for awhile but got nothing. Some kind of flying squirrel? Marmot?

9

Some local marmot, I think.

A Google image search led to this:

Looking at that list of species, marmot is definitely quite close. The face is different, but the flat furry tail fits:

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1388&bih=578&q=otter+tail&oq=otter+tail&gs_l=img.3..0l10.1157.2672.0.2980.10.10.0.0.0.0.268.1384.0j4j3.7.0....0...1ac.1.51.img..3.7.1381.n1QipPsHdOQ#hl=en&q=maemot&tbm=isch

ETA: Ninja’d by Ulfreida! LOL! That’s what I get for not refreshing before I post. . .

10

It looks like a pika with a large furry tail, face like a marmot.

11

It’s not a marmot, a woodchuck, a pika, a chinchilla, or a beaver. I’m not sure what it is yet, but it’s definitely none of those.

12

Just what I was coming to say. :slight_smile:

Looking at that page on the plateau, which lists a bunch of species, the one I think it’s closest to is a pika. But, it’s got furrier ears and tail.

Either that or it’s a really skinny marmot (aka a woodchuck). The ears incline me towards pika.

Darn cute little guy either way.

I tried to link to a pika image, so y’all could see the ears but my Google fu failed me at copying the image. Trying Googling “pika” and check out the ears.

13

Pikas have big ears and no tail. It’s definitely not a pika.

Marmots have smaller ears, a rounder tail, and are much heavier. It’s definitely not a marmot.

14

My best guess at this point is that it’s some kind of flying squirrel, particularly because of the flat tail. Unfortunately, the internet seems to be sadly lacking in images of Central Asian flying squirrels.

15

Here’s the Indian Giant Flying Squirrel. The ears and face are quite similar.

16

And you can see that his sides and body diamater are little wide for his general size… thats his wing like flaps in the curled state. He’s quite light actually. … look at the tiny mouth, tiny feet…

17

Thanks for the answers everyone! :slight_smile: It does look like its a Flying Squirrel.

18

Yeah. They both look mean, somehow.

19

They’re harmless, but beware of the moose that often travels with them.

20

I love you, Colibri!