When it comes to the "cold bird", I believe everyone is familiar with it, after all, we all learned the story of the "cold bird" when we were children, and people with good memory can even say the "classic quotations" of the "cold bird" - "Doro, Doro, the cold wind freezes me to death, and I will make a nest tomorrow". Although the story of "The Bird of the Cold" is fictional, it vividly teaches us a truth from an early age: don't be short-sighted, get by, don't procrastinate and be lazy, otherwise you may pay a heavy price.
In many people's imagination, the image of the "cold trumpet bird" is usually a lazy bird, such as:
It's no wonder, after all, their names make it easy to think they're birds. So, what exactly are the "trumpet birds"? Actually, if you think they're birds, you're wrong.
In fact, for a long time in the past, the author also thought that the "cold trumpet bird" was a kind of bird, until one day, the author found such a picture in a child's Chinese textbook:
This picture is an illustration of the text "The Bird of the Cold", from which we can see two animals, one of which is obviously the industrious magpie in the story, and who is the other animal? Since the story of "The Bird of the Cold" has only two protagonists, it can be inferred through the method of elimination that it should be the "Bird of the Cold", and its lazy body movements seem to confirm this, but the question is, this animal does not look like a bird no matter how it looks?
The author's first reaction to this was: Could it be that the illustration is wrong? But after thinking about it, this should be impossible, so the author went to check the information of the "cold bird", and the result was: it turned out that the "cold bird" was really not a bird, but a rodent with the scientific name "compound tooth flying squirrel". Let's take a closer look.
"Compound toothed flying squirrel" belongs to the order rodents, squirrel family, flying squirrel subfamily, compound toothed flying squirrel genus, is a species endemic to the mainland, they mostly live in the mountain forest area at an altitude of about 1200 meters, mainly feed on plants in the forest area, such as the leaves, bark, and seeds of arborvitae orientalis and pine, as well as the kernels of mountain peach and apricot, etc.
The "Compound Tooth Flying Squirrel" is a medium-sized rodent that typically weighs between 300 and 400 grams and is generally between 300 and 340 mm in length, with an overall appearance similar to that of a common squirrel, with a large fluffy tail.
As you can see, the "Flying Squirrels" don't look like birds at all, so why do people associate them with birds? One of the most likely reasons is that they can glide through the air.
Unlike common squirrels, "Flying Squirrels" have fleshy wings that can be spread and folded between their limbs, which allows them to climb to branches or other high places to leap down, and then use the unfolded fleshy wings to glide through the air, during which they can flexibly adjust the posture of their bodies and the shape of their fleshy wings to control the direction and speed of gliding, and then glide quickly and accurately to the target position.
Although the gliding distance of the "compound toothed flying squirrels" is relatively short (generally only a few tens of meters, at most about 200 meters), but from a distance, they still look a bit like birds, and on this basis, the "compound toothed flying squirrels" are diurnal and nocturnal animals, and there are not many of them, so it is reasonable to speculate that people did not observe them carefully and comprehensively at first, and then mistakenly thought that they were a bird.
People call the "Double-toothed Flying Squirrel" a "cold trumpet bird", probably because they can't stop calling in winter, which makes it easy to imagine them as a kind of bird that is usually too lazy to make a nest and is so cold in winter that it is so cold that it is called "cold trumpet bird".
However, zoologists have now found that the "compound tooth flying squirrel" only breeds once a year, and its estrus period is generally from late December to January, that is, the purpose of their frequent calls in winter is not actually because it is "cold and screaming", but should be to attract the attention of the opposite sex.
By the way, the cry of the "Flying Squirrel" is very special, and its pronunciation is similar to "Doo, Doo", so the "Doro, Doro" in the story should come from this.
It is worth mentioning that the "Compound Tooth Flying Squirrel" is meant to make a nest, and in order to avoid predators that may exist in nature, they usually choose to build their homes in steep stone caves, stone crevices, or tree hollows located in high places, and they generally use hay, branches, bark, and some bird feathers (if they can be found).
On the whole, the Flying Squirrel tries to keep its nest as dry and tidy as possible, and for added comfort, they usually spread a thick layer of hay over their sleeping area, and during the cold winter months, they even seal their holes very carefully with hay or leaves to prevent cold winds from entering.
It can be seen that as a real-life version of the "cold trumpet bird", the "compound toothed flying squirrels" are not as lazy as described in the story, they actually make nests, and they are also very "attentive".