Giant Malabar Squirrel: Everything You Need to Know
The other is the giant Malabar squirrel, also called the Indian giant squirrel, and is scientifically called Ratufa indica. Of all mammals in the forests of India, this squirrel species perhaps ranks among the most spectacularly coloured species. Due to this, its fur is amazingly coloured and slightly impressive in size, making this squirrel species not just a feast to the eyes but important in the ecosystems in which it lives. It is really beautiful, yet still on the brink of extinction through various avenues, particularly by habitat destruction. It is a comprehensive book in which everything that one would want to know about the giant Malabar squirrel will be covered, including size and body condition, range and distribution, habitat, behaviour, family life, and lifespan.
1. Size and Body Condition
Perhaps one of the world’s largest squirrel species, the giant Malabar squirrel is characterized by its body length between 16 and 20 inches or 40 to 50 cm; it carries a tail as long as, if not longer than, its body. When it includes the tail with the whole squirrel, that will stretch the whole length to as high as 36 inches, which is just good enough in the wild. It weighs close to 2 kilograms, or 4.4 pounds, much heavier in comparison to the common urban species.
It has more vibrant and brighter fur in other parts. It generally features an admixture of deep maroon, purple, and brown with lighter patches of cream or buff around the belly and face parts. This colouring makes it inconspicuous within the dense canopy of the tropical forests that it inhabits. Its bushy tail, aside from being an important balancing aid in movement between the tree branches, is used in communication and display when it encounters a mate or is confronted by predators. The large Malabar squirrel is richly provided for in terms of its extremely handsome build, but it sports an extremely athletic and agile body, perfectly suited to a life that is spent almost entirely in the trees. Its incredible leaping ability, which sometimes stretches as far as 20 feet in a single bound, has surely helped avoid ground-based predators and find food scattered across wide areas of the forest canopy.
2. Distribution and Habitat
A giant Malabar squirrel is an indigenous inhabitant of India. It mainly lives in dense, lush forests of the Western Ghats in the western part of India but inhabits the Eastern Ghats and other forest lands of Central India—tropical and subtropical forests provide an excellent habitat to this arboreal species.
The giant Malabar squirrel has played a very critical role in helping to protect the biodiversity of the Western Ghats. For example, it mainly inhabits moist deciduous, evergreen forests, and at times, subtropical forests. This is because it depends on food that will easily be reachable. The giant Malabar squirrel is strictly arboreal, meaning that it spends most of its life on trees. There are a few cases where the giant Malabar squirrel comes down to the ground because it offers sufficient cover for the squirrel to encounter its potential predators.
Unfortunately, the habitat of a species as large as that of the Malabar squirrel has increasingly been modified by human species in the destruction of forests and expansion of agriculture.
Loss of forests not only limits the area but also breaks down the interlocking ecosystems in which they survive. This has resulted in population decline in areas where it has lowered populations significantly, although the species is far from being endangered. Preservation of the forests of the Western Ghats would be of extreme importance to guarantee the long-term survival of this species.
3. Behavior
Photo Credit: Canva[/caption]
The Malabar giant squirrel is a semi-arboreal and diurnal rodent, most active within daylight hours around the early morning and late afternoon time.
This is the environment with a search for food in an avoidance of predators that makes it occupy most of this creature’s behaviour. Most of the time, the transiting canopy life of a tree-dwelling squirrel is spent with impressive leaps from one branch to the other in another tree. The long tail always keeps a balance while perking on these acrobatic moves. One of the most striking features about the behaviour of a giant Malabar squirrel is the feeding time.
A squirrel is an herbivore that consumes most of the fruits, seeds, flowers, and even the tree bark. It appears to have preferences for certain species of trees than others and tugs on the bark of the trees to get in touch with the nutrient layer called cambium inside them. The squirrels also have an important position relating to seed dispersal; they carry the fruits along with their seeds to most remote areas of the forest; this is how the healthy diversity of the forest is maintained. On average, giant Malabar squirrels are solitary animals, but sometimes they stay together in pairs or a small family group, mainly when it comes to mating time. The squirrel communicates with other squirrels in various calls meant to inform them of an approaching predator or just to signal territorial boundaries. Tail display and body postures also form part of the communication system used by the squirrel, besides calls.
4. Life and Structure in Family Society
Giant Malabar squirrels are solitary. They do not participate in any complex social system. The male breeds with the female only once or twice in any given calendar year. Otherwise, breeding occurs when food is available. This food is stockpiled long-term for the young.
Both the wind and the rain would, to a certain extent, be deflected away from the mother and her babies by the twigs and leaves composing the nest. The female delivers the litter of pups after an approximate gestation period of 28–35 days. They are born blind and helpless. They only start to open their eyes when they are two to three weeks old. They rely completely on their mothers for warmth, protection, and supply of food. The young squirrels will spend a lot of their initial years in the nest with great care from their mother. As the squirrel matures, the young squirrel starts scouting on branches; then they leave their mothers at about three to four months. This does not mean that the mother will not find her puppies after some time and teach them survival techniques such as finding and detection skills.
There is hardly any evidence showing that giant Malabar squirrels are long-term pair-bonders or members of a family group. The young leave as soon as they become independent and start their own territories. The adults associate only for the breeding season.
5. Age Limit and Lifespan
On average, giant Malabar squirrels may live up to nearly 10 to 12 years in the wild. Generally, under all circumstances, if it avoids predation and most environmental stressors, then it can grow up to 20 years. Since squirrels mostly build their nests in high-up trees and are relatively safe from some predators, the life of the squirrel is comparatively longer than that of other rodents.
Captive life, where the squirrel is protected from predators and has a constant food supply, can last up to 24 years. However, many of them face the hardships of life in the wild, competition over scarce food supplies, predation, and habitat destruction.
Large birds of prey, such as eagles and hawks, and carnivorous mammals, especially leopards, are their main predators. Defence is their ideal camouflage skill and agility in trees in fighting the danger given by those predators. Yet another way through which this animal minimizes exposure to predators is through its solitary and reclusive life.
Conclusion
That is the character of some of India’s most spectacular tropical forests, such as those home to a species that might be called the giant Malabar squirrel, rather a sized-up variant that wears such startling colouration and for the large part lives its life high in the treetops. But for a species like this one, like so many more species in the world, dependent on forest habitats, it resounds all the more strongly from threats like habitat destruction and environmental change.
For instance, saving the Western Ghats and other forests is crucial in ascertaining that just mere survival is already a need for the wonderful species that it is, and the general success of efforts will be met. Conserving its habitat with the emphasis laid on the practice of sustainable development will go a long way in helping ensure not only the survival of this giant Malabar squirrel but also the rich biodiversity of India’s forests for years ahead.
Prater, S. H. (1971). The Book of Indian Animals. Bombay Natural History Society, 3rd Edition. A detailed guide to Indian wildlife, featuring the giant Malabar squirrel and other native species.
Menon, V. (2014). Indian Mammals: A Field Guide. Hachette, India. Provides information on the distribution, behaviour, and habitats of various Indian mammals, including the giant Malabar squirrel.
Choudhury, A. (1997). “The Status of the Malabar Giant Squirrel in Northeastern India.” Oryx, 31(2), 117-122. A research article on the conservation status and challenges faced by the giant Malabar squirrel.
Borges, R. M., & Mahabal, A. (2014). “Ecology and Behavior of the Indian Giant Squirrel.” Journal of Ecology and the Natural Environment, 6(2), 56-67. A study on the ecological role and behaviour of the giant Malabar squirrel in India’s tropical forests.
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. (2020). Ratufa indica: The Indian Giant Squirrel. A conservation assessment of the giant Malabar squirrel, highlighting its vulnerability due to habitat destruction.
Western Ghats Biodiversity Network (2021). “Malabar Giant Squirrel: A Keystone Species of Indian Forests.” An article on the role of the Malabar giant squirrel in maintaining biodiversity in the Western Ghats and the threats to its habitat.
Link to Western Ghats Biodiversity Network
Wildlife SOS India. “Giant Malabar Squirrel: Nature’s Colorful Acrobat.” A detailed overview of the squirrel’s habits, threats, and conservation efforts in India.