Information on Sugar Gliders

Even though I had a lot of animals, ranging from dogs to cats, throughout my life, I've never seen such an amazing animal as sugar glider.

The thing is that sugar gliders are the most sociable and friendliest creatures I've ever seen or had the privilege to own and take care of.

These little creatures will become friends with any human as well as different kind of things or animals. Just the problem is that some animals or humans don't want to accept sugar gliders as their friends.

Ask any sugar glider owner and he/she will tell hundreds of different stories proving the statement above. Even I myself have a sugar glider that jumped on a 3 year old girl who was crying, just to see what was wrong and try to calm her down.

They will eat from your or your kid's hands when you will offer him food and come to you just to ask you to play with them or to cuddle them.

So the fact is that these are not only cute but also very friendly animals that will bond with anyone who wants to bond with them.

But the above is only true if you are willing to spend enough time with your sugar glider. You have to commit spending at least 2 hours a day of quality time with your sugar glider to make him happy and friendly. Do the opposite and your sugar glider will become depressed or even angry and start biting people.

Although everything above sounds great, there is of course one exception. As it seems, sugar gliders are not very good friends with ferrets. If you have a ferret and sugar glider, my number one tip would be to keep those two separate. Mostly because ferrets are hunters by nature your sugar glider might be at risk to become its prey.

Michael Bolden has been caring for sugar glider for over 15 years now. To get more information on sugar gliders be sure to visit http://www.sugarglidertips.com

Bonding With Sugar Gliders

Bonding with sugar gliders might take some time and patience, but it the most rewarding and wonderful part of owning a sugar glider as a pet.

To make your sugar glider become your best pal and really familiar with you, what you need is spend some quality time with it. If you have a sugar glider that has been bred in captivity it might take you a lot less time to bond with it, mostly because they are already familiar with humans and are not afraid of them. The simple rule here is not to force anything.

Take your time and be patience. Don't worry if your bonding will take a little more time than you thought before, usually it takes somewhere from instant bond to up to few months. To speed the bonding process what you can do is take some piece of cloth that you've been wearing for quite a while and that has your scent on it, and put it inside your sugar gliders nesting box. This little trick will help your sugar glider get used to your scent a lot faster.

If, however, you have a sugar glider who isn't completely tamed, don't wear gloves (as some people might want to do) while handling them. This is mostly because of the fact that sugar gliders will get used to the smell of your gloves, instead of your own scent.

Now, I know that these little suggies can bite when they get mad and it actually does hurt, but what I would suggest is just sticking it through. Don't try to jerk them around, mostly because it will hurt you even more and returning them to their cage once they've bitten you is also not a good idea. That's because your sugar glider will start to think, that every time it bites you, you put it back and leave it alone.

So what to do?

Stick it through, be brave and continue handling them. It might take a huge amount of your patience and another dose of pain-killers, but after a while your sugar glider will start to understand that even if it bites you, you still continue to handle it.

Make sure to keep children away from your sugar glider. That's because most of the kids, even love animals, show that love by squeezing too hard, which causes suggie to bite back. You can also use Pocket Training trick. Carry your sugar glider in your shirt pocket throughout all day, giving it treats from time to time. Just make sure that you don't lean to something and injure your suggie.

Michael Bolden has been caring for sugar glider for more than 15 years now. To learn more about bonding with sugar gliders be sure to visit his website at: http://www.sugarglidertips.com

Pricey pocket-sized pet proves popular

Pricey pocket-sized pet proves popular

One of the most popular booths at World of Pets Expo in Timonium over the weekend was that of “Pocket Pets,” distributors of Sugar Gliders, a tiny squirrel-like marsupial that lives in the wild in Australia, Indonesia, New Guinea and Tasmania.

They’re cute little boogers, with big brown eyes. Imagine a squirrel, crossed with a bat (would that be a squat?). The company says they are inexpensive to feed and care for, don’t smell bad or bite and are quick to bond with humans(contrary to some Internet reports). The company calls them “sugar bears,” and they sell for upwards of $400.

They’ve been sold in the US. for more than 15 years, and grown increasingly popular — in part because they’re so easily transportable. They love being in pockets, partly because that’s how they traveled in their infancy, partly because of the warmth the human body provides.

They’re also capable of gliding, having a fur covered membrane between their wrists and ankle that serves like a parachute when they jump of tree limbs.

Fascinating little creatures, and it was nice to get an up close look at them. But their domestication struck me as a little sad — that life soaring from treetops, for some, has been replaced by living in a pair of Levis. The average life span of a sugar glider is 12 to 15 years.

While Pocket Pets says sugar gliders are not exotic pets, the Humane Society of the United States considers them just that — and says that as such they require considerable expertise and specialized facilities. ”Wild or exotic animals — even those who were captive-born or hand-raised by people — have not been adjusted to life with humans. Doing so takes generation after generation. So keeping them as pets is usually inhumane — deliberately or not — and comes with threats to human health and safety.”

Posted by jwoestendiek January 26th, 2009 under Muttsblog.