Do you have sugar glider in your house? If yes, there’s a lot of fun and enjoyable moment I bet you already experienced between you and your beloved little animals. Despite they were born as wild animals, that fact didn’t really bother people to keep sugar glider as pet. Yes, appear to be harmless little creature bring another benefit for them. The number of people who keep sugar glider increased over the years, and you perhaps my friends, if you decided to be one of those people, you must prepare the equipment to support the life of this animal.
In their natural habitat, sugar glider life span tragically was worse than inside the captivity or being pet. This remind us that we could actively do something to support and give them opportunity to live longer. So, if you really decided to become sugar glider’s owner, make sure you do that on the right reason – to help and love them, not just for fun and make yourself “busy”. Furthermore, before you bring them home, make sure you already prepare all the equipment they need such as comfortable cages, also safe and fun accessories to entertain them.
Not to mention you need to ready to educate yourself about some of natural behavior exhibit by sugar gliders, such as common noises made by sugar gliders which would make you overwhelm without any proper knowledge. Moreover, the proper diet also could be a big issues without any understanding. You should understand, that sugar glider are sweet foods maniac. They fond and adore the sweetness of foods; but, despite their preference of foods, you need to know what’s best and healthy for them.
The heat topic on the internet around foods was is it safe to feed sugar gliders with raisin? Well, I am not going to mention anything, so you better check the article fr yourself (I am sorry my dear friends!). We need to educate ourselves as the owners, how to make our sugar glider own excellent life. To complete that mission, we do have so much thing to do. Manage the foods, maintain the cleanliness of sanitation and cage, and one particular thing that most people forget to do, the exercise.
Do sugar glider need to exercise? Unfortunately yes, they are. The problem of being an captivated or pet animal, the percentage of physical activities are decreased. The most salient example is the food. Being an pet or captivated species mean that sugar glider didn’t have to forage their own food; everything is provided. Meanwhile, in their natural habitat – the wildlife – they have to jump, and climb, tree to tree in order to get foods. Without any schedule exercise, they were naturally active.
But, that’s not the case when they were under people’s watch. They were being “spoil’ with all the foods and treats. That is the fundamental reason: you have to trick your sugar gliders to exercise without they even realize it. Distort their curiosity to open a way, willingly to exercise themselves. So, please note this: do sugar glider need to exercise? 2 sport for them!
Exercising Your Sugar Glider
1. The Running
Well, actually tread-wheel is a pun of tread-mill. The first sport that you could apply to your beloved sugar glider is running. Running is the most easy and simple sport for every creature on earth, included human. But, the problem is that sugar glider did not understand our language, neither do we understand their language. We – obviously – could not verbally order them to run, that’s impossible (unless you have hidden power). So, to solve this problem, you could simply put tread-wheel inside the cage.
Tread wheel is the wheel that would turn whenever your animal would step inside and move forward. This wheel literally would force and tricked sugar glider to continuously run. Actually, it’s not just an amusement for us who watch it, but it also a fun activity for sugar glider to do. For them, this is part of an unending game that would play over and over again. If you wonder do we really need to make our sugar glider exercise?
Just like in human, exercise is part of health maintain to our body. Exercise would help sugar glider to prevent obese and the most important thing is to replicate the “habitual running” that they would do in their own natural habitat. Lack of exercise also one of the reason of most fatal illness on sugar glider, such as paralysis. If you really love them, you would not let them just sleep all day without any activities at all. Purchase a tread-wheel and let them move!
2. The Climbing
Sugar gliders are always associated with climbing. It was their natural instinct to adjust with all the environment on a wildlife. So, when we move them out from nature we should know how to properly replace this habitual into our home and captivity. Although live inside the cage, provide sugar glider indulge the ability of climb. Just like hamster, sugar glider fond of this activity; so, to fulfill the wishes, you could add some tools inside the cage, such toys and accessories.
Surprisingly, it’s quite easy to find these stuffs on pet stores and online stores. One of the example is eucalyptus toys. Eucalyptus toys are shaped as ladder that consists in different number of rungs and length. You could pick the perfect one that suit with the size of the cage itself. Also, the hanging cork; this is another toys for you to make your glider sugar dream come true. The hanging cork is a toy that shaped as trunk which has a hole – big hole – on the center of its body as a place for hide.
When you hang these type of toys, you stimulate your little creature – with the urge of curiosity, also – to jump and climb on these toys. It was super fun and delightful to see your perfect sugar glider enjoying their day playing with these equipments!
This is the end of do sugar glider need to exercise? 2 sport for them! I hope you enjoyed it, my beloved friends!