USDA LICENSED BREEDER

SugarGliders

A few years ago I saw my first sugar glider in person.  I was blown away by its exotic looks and  I thought the little human like hands were incredible.  As long as I can remember I have been fascinated by the small marmosets and their miniature human appearance.  Fortunately common sense and a lack of having a huge disposable pile of cash stopped me from ever going down that headache filled road.  Then came 2001 and at  the local monthly reptile show I met a couple that raises gliders.  Up until this point I had only seen gliders in cages that were untamed and unhandleable.  When I was handed one of their gliders to look at I was immediately won over.  This was not some impossible to hold, biting, running for it's life wild animal, but a gentle, loving absolutely adorable girl who didn't bite or run.  She instead behaved perfectly and tolerated being touched and petted in any and every way.  This wasn't some wild thing that wanted nothing to do with humans, she actually liked them.  Little did I know that I was holding what was to be the mother of my glider.  A few months passed and my desire to have a glider did not.  When September 2001 rolled around, I guess because of my  approaching birthday, I decided to reserve a female glider as a gift for myself.  On October 5th I received the word that my little girl had emerged from the pouch.  Five weeks from the day I picked her up and my life has been richer for it ever since.

Petaurus breviceps     Sugar Glider Sugar gliders originally come from eucalyptus forests in nothernmost Australia and New Guinea.  Gliders make a home in a hollowed out tree and their territory extends out from that tree.  Whenever startled or feeling threatened the gliders return to their hollow tree.  This "home base" mentality along with their very social nature make them suprisingly adaptable and charming pets.

A sugar glider looks similar to a flying squirrel with a raccoon like overall coloring and pattern.  They also bear a resemblance to some of the smaller lemur species.  Gliders are however marsupials and not related to squirrels at all.  They have thumbs on front and back feet and the females have a pouch making them more closely related to an opossum than a squirrel.  They are in fact an opossum, they just don't move like it.

I have never had the opportunity to clock my gliders speed  but feel safe in saying that they easily match the speed of the squirrels in my backyard and for that matter, any animal I have ever seen.  When they hit top speed they can literaly become a furry blur and  running upside down does not slow them.  Equally impressive is their acrobatic ability.  Their latin name means acrobat and is well deserved.  These guys make the spider monkeys at the zoo look like arthritic old ladies.  They perform all the same one handed grabs, swinging, somersaults and everything else the monkeys do but at a much faster pace.    When they get cranked up playing and chasing each other around they are truly the most amazingly acrobatic things I have ever seen.  Another interesting note is that gliders do not merely glide from tree to tree to escape predators.  They can glide in excess of 150 feet from the trees and I have seen footage of them taking insects from the air in midflight.  This is a far cry from simply gliding from tree A to tree B.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE ON GLIDERS A properly socialized and well bonded glider will make and extremely rewarding and interactive pet for 10 to 15 years.  It will not only happily sleep in your shirt pocket peacefully, but retreat there whenever it feels threatened.  They don't smell, run away, bite or require a ton of maintenance.  You will not however have a well bonded well behaved glider on 30 minutes a day of half way giving it attention.  A glider is a serious grown up committment for a long time.  The rewards of owning a glider can be great but there is a lot of potential for a bad expierence as well.  Please don't add to the list of neglected gliders by making an impulse purchase of them.  These are truly magnificent animals and deserve better than to be farmed and neglected or bought on a whim and forgotten.

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