The orange flying squirrel lives in subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forests or dark coniferous forests at medium and high altitudes. Its food mainly consists of fruits, seeds, and young branches and leaves of plants.
In China, it is distributed in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing and Hubei.
The body size is similar to that of the spotted flying squirrel, with brown-black upper eye sockets, brown (orange) spots behind the ears, brown-yellow as the main color of the head, neck and back of the body, without large white spots in the hair tufts, slightly lighter in the waist and buttocks, orange-brown in the wing membrane, femur, front and back limbs and dorsal dorsum of the feet, light brown-yellow in the abdomen, and the tail is similar in color to the back.