Skinwings

(Aeromys pterodermatus subterraneis and sub-families) Underground-dwelling flying creatures of the New York urban ecology.

There is a widespread misconception that skinwings are some kind of bat. Actually, the Bestiarium Ignotum places the species in the sub-orderSciuromorpha, and the family Petauristinae, among the flying squirrels. The nearest "outer world" relative is Aeromys tephromelas, the black flying squirrel of southeast Asia.

No one is certain at what point in their evolution the skinwings went underground and changed from herbivores to omnivores. Remnants of what seem to be long-extinct colonies of an earlier furred vaiety in caves in Greece and Sicily suggest that the ancestors of skinwings might have moved underground in an attempt to survive the global winters caused by volcanic disasters like the great Minoan eruption that resulted in the destruction of ancient Thera.