Legends of flying carpets and even of mystical jins take on a whole new meaning if one looks at them from a Northern Pakistani angle.

Just a few years ago, an acquaintance of mine was present in a small village store in the Gilgit region when a local lady recounted an encounter with a jin the night before. She told how it had glided through the evening forest, passing right over her head and of how she had been rooted to the spot in fear. She described it as being about three feet long, three feet wide, black, hairy and floating soundlessly through the air!

What, in all probability, the lady had actually seen, was one of the rarest mammals in the world and one which is only to be found, in very small numbers, in and around the Gilgit and Hunza regions. Known as the ‘woolly flying squirrel’ or ‘Eupetaurus cinereus’ to give it its scientific name, this creature was once wrongly considered extinct, but there must have been a few remaining specimens hiding out somewhere as they have slowly but surely made a return over the past 20 years or so, although numbers are still very small.

There are other kinds of flying squirrels in Pakistan, but the woolly flying squirrel is of tremendous interest to zoologists as it is the only one that has been able to adapt to surviving in rocky, sometimes even treeless, surroundings.

The woolly flying squirrel is larger in size than the better known ‘giant red flying squirrel’ or Petaurista petaurista, measuring approximately two feet in length from the tip of its nose to the tip of its relatively short tail.

Dark brownish-grey to almost black in colour, it lives on nuts and berries and it is thought that the female gives birth to no more than two babies in early spring and, possibly but no one knows for certain, another two babies later in the year.

Unlike many other squirrel species and despite the bitterly cold winters experienced in the region, the woolly flying squirrel does not go into winter hibernation as its thick furry coat insulates it against freezing wind and sub-zero temperatures and, again unlike other squirrel species, its teeth have developed special characteristics which allow it to chew up very tough, stunted plant material of a kind that only grows at very high altitudes and in exposed places.

Only emerging from nesting caves and rocky crevices after sunset. the woolly flying squirrel is safe from many predators but is known to be both hunted and caught by very large, nocturnal eagle owls who seem to have developed a gourmet taste for these rare creatures.