Forest mammals live in a multidimensional space which they negotiate in myriad, ingenious ways. Many of them operate as much in the vertical dimension as in the horizontal, yet only bats have the power of flight. The “flying squirrels” we filmed in Japan actually glide through the forest, sacrificing height for distance but saving the vital energy that real flying or climbing would require. Add the vertical dimension of a forest and you open up a multitude more niches for animals to fill: there is a greater diversity of mammals in forests than in any other biome. But they’re not all friends, of course: the tangled web of alliances, competition and predation presents a formidable challenge to every forest denizen, from tiny tenrecs to tigers, to enthusiastic but less well adapted film crews.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/11hfHVpvdrDyFbJjNRPLMCs/revealing-the-denizens-of-the-forest
