How far can flying mammals get?

One point of interest is the distribution of gliding animals. Many gliding animals are found in Southeast Asia, some in Africa, and there are no gliding vertebrates in South America. However, many more animals in South America have prehensile tails than in Africa and Southeast Asia. It has been argued that gliding animals dominate in Southeast Asia as the forests are less dense than in South America. In dense forest there is not room to glide, but a prehensile tail is very useful for moving from tree to tree. Also South American rainforests tend to have more lianas as there are less large animals to eat them compared to Africa and Asia, these lianas would aid climbers but obstruct gliders. Curiously Australia contains many mammals with prehensile tails and also many mammals which can glide, in fact all Australian mammalian gliders have tails that are prehensile to an extent.