by Michael Totten

Created on: March 03, 2009

A happy pet sugar glider will be perfectly content to ride around in your pocket all day long. However, even though sugar gliders are genetically hard-wired to be highly sociable creatures, this easy bond doesn't come automatically. To establish such a deep, trusting relationship, it is useful to know a little about how the sugar glider interacts with others of its own kind in the wild.

The sugar glider (Petaurus breviceps) is a naturally social marsupial resembling the North American flying squirrel. In their natural environment, they live in colonies of up to seven adults and their young, making a group of 15 to 30 in total. This social group is constantly together, feeding, caring for the young, and marking and defending its territory.

Because the instinct to trust goes back to the sugar glider's days in the pouch as a blind joey, physical contact is tightly tied to scent when it comes to bonding. Thus the first step in establishing a trusting relationship is to spend time with your sugar glider, at least a couple of hours every day and early evening, and to leave scent markers of your presence for when you can't be physically there. For the sugar glider, security means being enveloped in a darkened area within a familiar, trusted scent, so place a scrap of fabric with your scent into its bonding pouch. As well, find an old shirt you don't plan on using anymore for any other purpose. Wear it for a day and a night, sleep in it, and then never wash it again. This will become the cover for your sugar glider's cage, and later you will use it to help the glider become accustomed to being carried by you.

You don't want this scent to become associated with anything bad, only with good things. Sugar gliders respond poorly to negative feedback of any kind, so be careful not to startle or scare the sugar glider in any way, especially during the first months of bringing the sugar glider home, when everything is still new and strange. It may lunge at your approach and even try to bite, both signs of defensiveness and anxiety. It is normal for a newly arrived sugar glider to be anxious. Wouldn't you be?

Until your sugar glider is secure within its new surroundings, don't attempt any direct physical contact. Instead, let the sugar glider become familiar with your presence and accept you slowly on its own terms. You will know when this has happened because the sugar glider won't start chittering anymore as you approach the cage. Always move slowly around the cage, avoiding

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