Fiona Macleod
Sugar gliders, the latest fad in the exotic pet market, are tiny marsupials from Australia and Indonesia, about the size of a large rat with a long tail.
In the United States, sugar gliders are big business. Many books and websites are dedicated to them. Now South African conservation officials, who have received applications to import them recently, have to decide whether they should be allowed into this country.
It’s difficult to understand why anyone would want a sugar glider. They’re very demanding. Because they are marsupials, they like to be carried around in a pouch. As social creatures – in their natural environment, they hang around in groups of 20 to 40 – they need constant attention. “They’re not the kind of animal you can put in a cage, feed and forget about,” says one website. “If you have a single glider, you need to pay attention to it for at least two hours every day.”
They like to play at night – usually around midnight – and sleep all day. They’re hyper-active, and one of their favourite activities is to whizz through the air and land on their owner’s face. Like flying squirrels, they have thin membranes between their legs which they use as wings to glide up to 80m at a time.
“I have a male glider called Facehugger,” writes one enthusiast. “He got this name because he would jump on my face and give it a good hugging. This didn’t hurt so bad when he was little, but now he has claws I do my best to avoid it.”
So what’s the attraction of these rather nasty-sounding creatures? “It’s the novelty factor,” says Neil Fraser, an inspector with the wildlife unit of the National Council of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA).
The NSPCA opposes the import of exotic pets like sugar gliders into South Africa, Fraser says, because “we have to clean up the mess when the animals fall out of fashion … It’s bad enough when people try to make pets out of indigenous wildlife. It’s even more difficult with exotic wild animals because they are so far away from their natural ecosystems.”