Sugar glider - a flying possum?

A sugar glider eating an almond at the Kangaroo Farm in Kelowna.

Sugar gliders are normally dark gray with black markings around the head.  The one I photographed above is leucistic, a recessive condition that produces a whitish coat.  If you want to see what a normal sugar glider looks like (and a host of other varieties), click here.

Sugar gliders get their names because they have a fondness for sugary foods and can glide remarkable distances, up to about the length of a football field.  They do this by stretching the fore and rear limbs far apart which stretches out a soft membrane called a patagium.  They cannot actually fly with this, but it allows them to ride a cushion of air to the ground or another tree.  It uses its tail as a rudder to help it navigate.

Sugar gliders are a small type of possum.  To be clear, it is not a type of opossum, which is a North American marsupial.  Possums are small arboreal marsupials that live in or near Australia.  There are about 100 species belonging to the family that includes brushtail and ringtail possums.

There are cool videos of sugar gliders soaring through space on Youtube, this is a short you can look at here.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com


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