Papua and Guinea
the flying
Sugar Gliders

In the Spring of 1999, we added another member to our family - a little "sugar glider" named "Papua". Sugar gliders are nocturnal pouched marsupials from the South Pacific jungles of Papua/New Guinea (where my mom was born).

Even though they are related to kangaroos and opposums, sugar gliders look more like a cross between a flying squirrel and a chipmunk, a hamster, a chincilla (very soft velvet fur), a spider monkey (their furry prehensile tail holds on to things), a kinkajou, a tree kangaroo, and an opposum (they have opposable thumbs like opposums), but with cute black eyes and big "Yoda" ears!

Sugar gliders have a life span of about 14 years. They eat fruit, nuts, seeds, yoghurt, crickets, (they hold their food in their little hands like a monkey), and love anything sweet (that's where they get the "Sugar" part of their name!) They get the "glider" part because they can hop and glide from tree to tree, and they are said to be able to glide 150-200 feet from very high treetops in the New Guinea jungles. (So far Papua can jump several feet from his cage to our shoulders.)

A few weeks later, we got Papua a mate, and named her "Guinea" (Get it? - "Papua/New Guinea"!) Although Guinea is a few weeks younger than Papua, she is now almost the same size as Papua, about 6 inches long.

Sugar gliders are nocturnal, so they sleep all day in a little sleeping bag, but when they wake up at night, they love to scurry around the sofa with their little furry tails up in the air while we are watching TV, and they play like kittens - they are SO cute! Papua is very tame, loves to have his head and back scratched, and Guinea appears to be pregnant with their first baby, so she is not quite as friendly as Papua.