Celebes Dwarf Squirrel

About this species

Size

One museum female: head and body 12.5cm; tail 9.3cm

Range

Northeastern and central Sulawesi and nearby islands, including Sangihe

The Celebes dwarf squirrel is the smallest and plainest member of Sulawesi’s endemic genus Prosciurillus. A systematic and genomic review describes it as lacking the coloured ear tufts and tail banding found in several relatives. Its general coloration is brownish or olive. One Smithsonian female collected on Lembeh in 1916 measured 12.5 cm from head to body and had a 9.3 cm tail; those figures document that individual rather than the entire species (Smithsonian NMNH specimen record; Zelditch et al. 2016).

Unlike most other Prosciurillus, which occupy narrow ranges, P. murinus is comparatively widespread. Verified records extend through northeastern and central Sulawesi and onto nearby islands, including Sangihe. Genetic research using museum skins and mitochondrial and nuclear sequences placed it within the diverse Sulawesi squirrel radiation and repeatedly used it as a representative of Prosciurillus in evolutionary analyses. The sources opened provided no dependable species-level diet, nest or breeding information, so this account does not generalise from better-studied squirrels (Zelditch et al. 2016; Wikipedia general account).

Description: Wildlife of sulawesi guide, Wildlife of Everywhere (wildlifeofeverywhere.com); general species information paraphrased from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)