I was explaining to my colleage Lance Harkin the cruel fate of having found the love of my life but that he's allergic to cats and dogs. [Disclaimer: This is an irony I am more than happy to grapple with, since it means that I've found my Jonah!]
So then Lance sent me this link and said that these little guys are too cute to be allergic to. I've shown Jonah and we are dying to try these marsupials out!!
Description:
The diet of wild sugar gliders consists mainly of sap, nectar, bugs, and small animals such as baby birds. They are nocturnal, so as pets they're most fun late in the evening and early in the morning, and they are capable of making an interesting variety of sounds. They are very clean little animals, and although they do have their own unique scents, they don't smell bad if their diet is correct. There are also some health problems that glider owners should be aware of.
Read: You'll have to catch and maim baby birds to feed your little qt. They will not let you sleep so you'll find yourself at your computer late at night with bleeding eyeballs and your little qt sitting and staring at you and occassionally throwing pecans at you in efforts to strike up a little playtime. You'll be scared and titillated by the bizarre sounds the little qt will make. If you don't catch enough baby birds (preferably yank them away from their nests while their mother is in mid-feeding session), they'll stink up your living space bad, real bad. Face it, your qt pie will develop a rare sugar glider disease causing it to bleed out of its anus and onto everything you own while it moans and cries all day and night until you throw a pillow over it for 5 minutes.
As for their smells, I hope ours will do the first thing more than the third thing...will let you know.
Gliders produce at least three distinct odors. One is a sweet, flowery smell; another I don't know how to describe, but it is not really offensive. It can get relatively strong at times, when they are breeding, but after a few days it dies away again. The third is a pungent smell that is produced by the anal gland when a glider is afraid.
And onto breeding...
Yes, fathers will breed with their daughters if they are left together.
The hubris of humans...as if we are above this behavior!!
And taming...
...there are some ages when they're really hard to tame. "Teenage" gliders are the worst, and I guess second worst are adults who have never been tamed.
Humans and gliders, one and the same.
Diet do's and don'ts:
Gliders have a real sweet tooth, and can be little pigs when it comes to sweets and fatty foods. My first pair of gliders were not tame, so when I discovered foods they particularly liked, I'd use them as bribes to get them to trust me. Pecans were a favorite, as were sugar cubes. I had enough sense not to give them much sugar, but pecans seemed safe enough... Within a few months I had two gliders who were very tame, and also very very FAT.
I think this glider owner hates fat people. This is what a sugar glider starvation tank looks like:
