Animal
Sugar glider
The sugar glider is a small, furry animal from Australia. It has big eyes and a long, fluffy tail. It can glide from tree to tree!
The sugar glider is a small marsupial from the forests of eastern Australia. Stretchy skin between its front and back legs works like a parachute, so it can glide up to 50 meters between trees. It comes out at night to lick sweet sap and nectar and to catch insects, and it lives in family groups that share a nest.
Petaurus breviceps is a nocturnal gliding possum. A 2021 study split the former sugar glider into three species, restricting this one to eastern Australia on the coastal side of the Great Dividing Range. It glides on a membrane from the fifth finger to the ankle, feeds on plant exudates, nectar and insects, and lives in scent-marked family clans.
Photo: Greg Tasney, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Meet the sugar glider
The sugar glider is a small, soft, gray animal.
It has big dark eyes, a pink nose and a dark stripe on its face. Its tail is long and fluffy.
The sugar glider is a marsupial: like a kangaroo, the mother carries her babies in a pouch. Its body is about 16 to 21 centimeters long, and an average adult weighs around 110 grams.
Its fur is soft and gray, with a pale belly and a dark stripe that runs from its nose over its head. It has big dark eyes for seeing at night, large thin ears and a long, bushy tail. Along each side of its body is a fold of furry skin, ready to open like a parachute.
Petaurus breviceps is a small gliding possum (order Diprotodontia, family Petauridae). The Australian Museum gives a size range of 16 to 21 centimeters, and Animal Diversity Web an average mass of about 110 grams for sugar gliders as they were defined before 2021.
The pelage is gray above and pale below, with a dark mid-dorsal stripe running onto the face, large forward eyes and large, thin ears. The gliding membrane, or patagium, stretches from the fifth finger to the ankle, and the long, bushy tail serves for stability and steering in the air.
Quick facts
- Group
- Mammal
- Length
- 16 to 21 cm
- Weight
- up to 110 g
Where it lives
Sugar gliders live in Australia.
They live in forests near the east coast. In the day they sleep in holes in trees.
Not long ago, scientists thought sugar gliders lived across northern and eastern Australia and on New Guinea. In 2021 they found that these gliders were really three different species.
The true sugar glider lives only in eastern Australia, on the coast side of the Great Dividing Range, a long chain of mountains and hills. It lives in forests and woodlands, and sleeps by day in leafy nests inside tree hollows. Its relatives, the savanna glider and Krefft's glider, live in northern and eastern Australia.
Cremona and colleagues (2021) combined genetic and physical evidence to show that the widespread "sugar glider" comprised three species. Petaurus breviceps in the strict sense occurs only in eastern Australia on the coastal side of the Great Dividing Range; the savanna glider (P. ariel) occupies northern Australia and Krefft's glider (P. notatus) eastern and northern Australia (Australian Museum).
It lives in forests and woodlands and dens by day in leaf-lined nests in tree hollows. Gliders on New Guinea, once included in this species, are not part of its range. Its current range is therefore far smaller than older field guides show.
Continent
Its habitat
Where can you find this animal?
- Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Forests and woodlands of eastern Australia on the coastal side of the Great Dividing Range. Gliders in northern Australia and New Guinea now belong to other species. It lives in only a narrow eastern strip of Australia.
Places: Australia.
Source: Australian Museum (after Cremona et al. 2021) · checked October 2026
Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Counts of GBIF records of wild observations (human and machine) and preserved specimens. Records include introduced populations, vagrants, escaped or released animals and misidentifications, so a country with records is not necessarily part of the native range.
Wild sightings have been recorded in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, United States, Germany, Japan, DR Congo and China.
Source: gbif · checked October 2026
Range maps show where scientists say an animal lives, often country by country. An animal may live in only part of a country shown, and sightings records can include animals that wandered far from home.
A sweet tooth
Sugar gliders love sweet food.
They lick sap from trees and nectar from flowers. They also catch bugs.
Sugar gliders got their name from their love of sweet food. They lick sap from eucalyptus trees and eat pollen and nectar from flowers.
They also hunt insects, especially moths and beetles, and eat insect grubs and spiders. What they eat changes with the seasons: in spring and summer they eat mostly insects, and in fall and winter mostly sap and pollen.
Sugar gliders are omnivores. Animal Diversity Web lists eucalyptus sap as a staple, with pollen, nectar, insects and their larvae, arachnids and small vertebrates.
The diet is seasonal: insects, mainly moths and beetles, dominate in spring and summer, and plant products such as sap and pollen dominate in autumn and winter. In long cold spells or food shortages, sugar gliders can enter short periods of torpor to save energy. (These diet studies predate the 2021 split and may include all three species.)
Did you know?
Sugar gliders steer with their fluffy tails.
When gliding, a sugar glider uses its long, bushy tail to stay steady and steer.
The tail provides stability and steering during glides.
A living parachute
A sugar glider has stretchy skin on its sides.
When it jumps and spreads its legs, the skin opens like a kite. Then it glides!
A sugar glider cannot really fly, but it can glide. A thin, furry skin stretches from its little finger to its ankle on each side. When it leaps from a tree and spreads its arms and legs, the skin opens like a kite.
It can glide up to 50 meters from one tree to another, steering with its long, bushy tail. Look at its hands in the photo: each finger ends in a sharp claw.
The patagium runs from the fifth finger of the hand to the ankle and opens when the limbs are spread, turning the body into an aerofoil. Gliders of the genus can travel up to about 50 meters between trees (Australian Museum; ADW gives up to 45 meters), using the long, bushy tail for stability and steering.
Sharp claws are visible on the hands. Scent glands on the forehead, chest, hands and feet and around the anus produce the smells used to mark territory and clan members (Animal Diversity Web).
Babies in a pouch
A baby sugar glider is very, very tiny.
It grows in its mother's pouch. Often there are two babies.
Sugar gliders often have twins. Babies are born after only about 16 days, weighing about a fifth of a gram, and crawl into their mother's pouch to drink milk and grow.
They stay in the pouch for just over two months. Then they stay in the nest, and at about three and a half months old they leave the nest to look for food, usually with their mother. Females can breed before their first birthday.
Sugar gliders commonly bear twins, which stay in the pouch for just over two months before foraging from the nest, usually with their mother (Australian Museum).
ADW gives a gestation of about 16 days, a newborn mass of about 0.19 grams, first emergence from the pouch at about 70 days and leaving the nest at about 111 days, after which the young soon become independent. Females mature at about 236 days and males at about 456 days. These figures come from studies of sugar gliders before the 2021 split.
A family clan
Sugar gliders live in small family groups.
They sleep together in one nest. They bark like tiny dogs to warn of danger.
Sugar gliders are most active at night. Up to seven adults and their young can form a family group called a clan and share one nest in a tree hollow.
Inside the clan they are playful and friendly. The top male rubs his scent on the other clan members and around the nest, so everyone smells like family. Gliders from another clan are chased away noisily. Sugar gliders make many sounds, including an alarm call like a small dog's bark.
Clans of up to seven adults plus young share a nest and a territory, which ADW puts at about one hectare. Within the clan they are playful and social, but they defend the territory aggressively and noisily against other animals and gliders from other clans (Australian Museum).
Dominant males mark clan members and the area around the nest with secretions from chest glands; ADW adds that forehead glands and saliva are used, and that animals lacking the clan scent are attacked. The vocal repertoire includes an alarm call resembling a small dog's bark.
Did you know?
Scientists found that sugar gliders are really three kinds of gliders.
In 2021, scientists showed that the animals called sugar gliders were really three species: the sugar glider, the savanna glider and Krefft's glider.
Cremona et al. (2021) split Petaurus breviceps into P. breviceps, P. ariel and P. notatus.
Homes in old trees
Sugar gliders need old trees with holes to sleep in.
Keeping big old trees helps sugar gliders.
Sugar gliders are listed as Least Concern, which means they were not thought to be in danger. But that check was made in 2016, before scientists split them into three species, so it was really about all three together.
The true sugar glider lives in a much smaller area than scientists used to think. Because it sleeps in tree hollows, which form only in older trees, keeping forests with big old trees gives it places to live.
The IUCN assessed Petaurus breviceps as Least Concern in 2016 (Salas and colleagues), when the name covered gliders across northern and eastern Australia and New Guinea. After the 2021 split, P. breviceps in the strict sense has a much smaller range, and the 2016 assessment has not yet been replaced.
Because clans den in tree hollows, the species depends on forests and woodlands that retain hollow-bearing trees. Older accounts describe sugar gliders as common, but their status needs to be understood species by species.
IUCN Red List
How is the sugar glider doing in the wild?
- Least Concern (this animal)
- Near Threatened
- Vulnerable
- Endangered
- Critically Endangered
- Extinct in the Wild
- Extinct
Least Concern
Not at risk of disappearing from the wild right now.
See the IUCN Red List assessment · The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022.2
Amazing facts
-
A newborn sugar glider is very, very tiny.
A newborn sugar glider weighs only about 0.19 grams.
Neonates weigh about 0.19 grams, typical of the tiny, undeveloped young of marsupials.
-
Sugar gliders steer with their fluffy tails.
When gliding, a sugar glider uses its long, bushy tail to stay steady and steer.
The tail provides stability and steering during glides.
-
Sugar gliders can bark like a tiny dog.
One of the sugar glider's alarm calls sounds like a small dog barking.
The alarm call resembles a small dog's bark.
-
Scientists found that sugar gliders are really three kinds of gliders.
In 2021, scientists showed that the animals called sugar gliders were really three species: the sugar glider, the savanna glider and Krefft's glider.
Cremona et al. (2021) split Petaurus breviceps into P. breviceps, P. ariel and P. notatus.
Words to know
- marsupial
- a mammal whose babies grow in a pouch on the mother's belly
- glide
- to move smoothly through the air without flapping
- nocturnal
- active at night and asleep during the day
- sap
- the sugary liquid that moves food around inside a tree
- tree hollow
- a hole inside an old tree trunk or branch where animals can shelter
Discovery challenge
-
How does a sugar glider get from tree to tree?
How does a sugar glider travel between trees?
Which adaptation lets Petaurus breviceps move between trees without descending?
- It glides on stretchy skin
- It flaps feathered wings
- It swims
Show the answer
It glides on stretchy skin
It glides! Stretchy skin opens like a kite.
It glides on a furry skin stretched from its little finger to its ankle, up to 50 meters.
A patagium from the fifth finger to the ankle allows glides of up to about 50 meters.
-
Where does a baby sugar glider grow?
Where do baby sugar gliders spend their first two months?
Where does early development take place in sugar gliders?
- In its mother's pouch
- In an egg
- In a pond
Show the answer
In its mother's pouch
In its mother's pouch.
In the pouch: sugar gliders are marsupials, and babies stay there just over two months.
In the pouch, as in other marsupials; young emerge after about 70 days.
-
What sweet food do sugar gliders like?
Which sweet foods do sugar gliders eat?
Which plant foods form much of the sugar glider's diet in autumn and winter?
- Tree sap and nectar
- Candy from people
- Seaweed
Show the answer
Tree sap and nectar
They lick sap from trees and nectar from flowers.
Eucalyptus sap, nectar and pollen, plus insects.
Plant exudates such as eucalyptus sap, and pollen, dominate in autumn and winter.
-
Where do sugar gliders live?
Where does the sugar glider live since the 2021 species split?
What is the range of Petaurus breviceps in the strict sense?
- Eastern Australia
- Africa
- South America
Show the answer
Eastern Australia
In Australia, near the east coast.
Eastern Australia, on the coast side of the Great Dividing Range.
Eastern Australia on the coastal side of the Great Dividing Range.
Places where you might see it
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For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Explain how gliding works and how it differs from flying.
- Describe what a marsupial is.
- Understand how new evidence can split one species into several.
- Discuss why old, hollow trees matter for wildlife.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- How is gliding different from the flying of birds and bats?
- Why might sharing one family smell help a sugar glider clan?
- If one species turns out to be three, why might scientists need to check again how safe each one is?
Try at home or in class
- Fold a paper glider and a crumpled paper ball, drop both from the same height and see which stays in the air longer: why?
- Find the Great Dividing Range on a map of Australia and color the strip between it and the east coast.
Key vocabulary: marsupial, glide, nocturnal, sap, tree hollow
Where these facts come from
- GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF Occurrence Search , Global Biodiversity Information Facility (CC0 1.0 (backbone); occurrence counts are facts derived from records under CC0, CC BY and CC BY-NC)
- The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species , International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN terms of use (no redistribution of Red List data or range maps))
- Sugar Glider , Australian Museum
- Petaurus breviceps (sugar glider) , Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan
- Petaurus breviceps: IUCN Red List global assessment record (Salas et al. 2016), IUCN checklist on GBIF , GBIF
- Petaurus breviceps (Sugar Glider), Salas et al. 2016, global assessment (before the 2021 split) , IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file: Public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA only (credited on each page))
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated November 1, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.