The Language of Sugar Gliders

Here is a pretty good video that goes over the different noises that sugar gliders make.  

            Personally, I have only heard my sugar gliders bark, crab, and "sneeze".  My sugar gliders bark on a daily basis, right before they tuck themselves in for bed around seven in the morning (they are nocturnal).  Based on their habits and personalities, I think that it is Tinki barking at Telly and it is because she is telling him to calm down and go to bed.  I have only heard Telly crab and he only did it on the day that we brought him home.  I think that he crabbed at my sister and I because he was scared and wanted to portray himself as a vicious giant, rather than a cute little fur-ball.  Since sugar gliders are so tiny and really do not have a way of defending themselves against predators, they use crabbing to try to scare the predator away from them.  When sugar gliders crab they make themselves look bigger than they actually are, expose their teeth, and make a very loud, distinctive cry that can actually be very intimidating.


Here is a video that my sister and I found on YouTube and watched when Telly crabbed, and we had no idea what he was doing or why he was doing it.  It was a good reference video to learn that crabbing is a natural and normal sugar glider noise.

What's in a Name?

As you can probably tell, this entry revolves around the long (and even excruciating) experience that my sister and I had while coming up with a name for our new sugar glider.  As soon as we got in the car for the trip home, my sister and I were bouncing ideas for his name off of each other.  We each came up with a handful of names, but nothing quite fit.  I think the problem was that our new pet was a native of Australia and considered “exotic” and we wanted something that reflected that.  Cue my sister’s fanatical obsession with Australian actress Rebel Wilson; and suddenly our little guy was named after a lady.  Don’t get me wrong I think Rebel Wilson is hilarious, but I by no means thought that Rebel was the name for our little man.  I let my sister know that I did not think that he looked or acted like  “Rebel”, but as much as I wanted to further protest his new moniker, I bit my tongue because “Rebel” was mine and my sister’s pet, not just mine, so I knew that we had to cooperate to make his life with us amazing.

This is one of the very first pictures that we took of our new friend.
Does he look like a "Rebel" to you?

So my sister made it known to our family that his name was Rebel.  But as the next couple of days dragged on she started to have second thoughts; I think my hesitation over the name had finally eaten its way into her thoughts.  I also think that as we got to see more of “Rebel’s” personality, we realized just how little of a “rebel” our little man was.  He was way too sweet of a little guy and had an enormously outgoing personality that in no way reflected his minute size.  My sister and I soon found ourselves back at square one; what were we going to name him?

Eventually, and believe it or not, we settled on one of the very first names that we brainstormed for him; Telly.  Now before you question our sanity, there is a story behind that name.  My family has four other pets on top of our two sugar gliders (the story of sugar glider number two will be told a little later); we have three cats named Tiggir, Leo, and Meowth, and one dog named Koia.  My sister had taken to calling Leo, our only male cat, “Telly” because he reminded her of the Teletubbie creatures from the children's show of the same name.  As we started to see our little sugar glider's personality begin to emerge, we were amazed by how much he resembled Leo.  Therefore it was only appropriate to name our new baby boy after our first baby boy.  Despite the uncertainty of his original name, once we decided on naming our little guy Telly, the name just fit and we knew it was the one.

My sister holding Telly.