sugar gliders
Peter
Wondering if anyone here has any experience with Sugar Gliders comparing
them to rats .
Reggie and The Kids
paghat
<peter_h...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Guy,
> Wondering if anyone here has any experience with Sugar Gliders comparing
> them to rats .
COMPARISONS:
Sugar Gliders sleep all day, poop stinky sticky syrup, don't love you,
have very specialized diets.
Rats jump up wide awake to see you any time of day or night, poop solids,
do love you, can eat almost anything within reason.
Sugar gliders are only semi-intelligent with a limited range of
personality (though their advocates will disagree with that one, small
marsupials just don't have brain power). Rats are very intelligent with
wide range of personality (brain capacity to weight ratio in the rodent
kingdom is outmatched only by squirrels -- otherwise rats are the
smartest, the most socially & psychologically complex.)
Rats can be taught elaborate tricks for food rewards.
Sugar gliders can't be taught elaborate tricks.
Sugar gliders are soft & have really big eyes.
Rats are less soft & have iddy biddy beady eyes except when brusking then
they have popeyes.
Sugar gliders are expensive, rats are inexpensive.
Sugar gliders are tropical or subtropical & need to be kept warm, rats are
more adaptable as to temperature so long as they don't suffer drafts.
Rats suffer all sorts of unfortunate diseases. So do sugar gliders --
everything from cataracts & hernias to bone deformities & lameness & are
easily injured phyusically -- though by adhering to rigid very restrictive
& careful diet most diseases can be avoided for many years.
Veterinarians almost never know how to treat sugar gliders properly when
illnesses occur. Veterinarians are more apt to be able to treat rat
ailments, but I wouldn't count on that being a good-outcome likelihood for
rats either.
Rats live three years then are so old they're pitiful. Sugar gliders live
ten to fifteen years, barring illness or stress factors that shorten their
lives.
Sugar gliders have extremely pretty tails, rat tails take some getting
used to before they seem pretty.
Rats are social & love other rats. Sugar gliders are territorial & attack
sugar gliders other than those they were raised with.
Rats are social & need the company of people AND rats, but it is possible
for rats to have their social well-being firmed with only human
companionship. Sugar gliders also suffer loneliness without a mate, &
human companionship cannot make up for their need one little bit. In later
life if one of a pair dies, the remaining sugar glider will be very
difficult to socialize with any new sugar gliders, so is at risk of
illness & death from sheer lonely misery yet remains unwilling to bond
with a new sugar glider.
Rats raise their infants in a nest. Sugar gliders raise their infants in a
pouch.
Male sugar gliders have three scent glands & quite often smell awful.
Advocates claim the odor is no worse than ferrets -- but ferrets can be
descented thank god, sugar gliders cannot be descented.
Male rats have one scent gland which tends to smell lovely like sandlewood.
While female sugar gliders do not have the horrid scent glands, they do
piss on everything to mark territory, as do the males, they piss on
everything aggressively, & their urine has an unpleasant odor.
Rats & especially male rats "mark" territory with SMALL amounts of piss
(usually) & it doesn't smell bad (unless left long enough to develop a
bacterial odor).
Sugar gliders can be delicate; the least roughhousing or mishandling can
break toes or injure musculature. Rats are sturdier for handling.
Sugar gliders frequently bite & scratch their owners, especially if their
owner has an unknown smell, the smell of another sugar glider, or if the
glider is in any way startled or stressed; even the smell of soap can send
them into a wild biting frenzy (increasing their chances of injury while
trying to calm them down).
Such frenzied biting is so extremely rare in tamed rats that any similarly
sudden misbehavior would have to be the result of a brain disease or
tumor.
Sugar gliders can become stressed from too much handling leading to
neurotic behavioral or health problems, & so make mediocre pets for
children who may want to handle them a quite a lot without sufficient
carefulness. Rats can be handled endlessly, they'd stay with you all day
if they could, wrastling & boxing & running & riding, happy as larks.
If not handled an hour a day sugar gliders may turn "wild."
If not handled an hour a day rats will just be sad & miss you.
If not handraised & tame when you obtain a sugar glider, it will very
probably never be tamable later on, as they are NOT domestic animals.
Even with minimum handling while young, domestic rats are very apt to be
friendly; if not yet fully tamed when obtained, they USUALLY can be tamed
with minimal patience (exceptions are rare but exist).
A rat unless abused or mishandled (or never handled) in its early life
never have behavioral problems -- once it becomes a good pet, it remains
one unto death, indeed becomes increasingly doting on its Human as it
ages. Sugar gliders commonly develop behavior problems later in life,
including self-mutilation, fear of humans they formerly trusted.
Some things in common: Rats can develop neurotic problems like
self-grooming to baldness, so can sugar gliders. Bored rats often becoem
obese with attendant health problems, so do sugar gliders. Sugar gliders
ears are so cute, dumbo rats ears are too.
Sugar gliders are illegal in California, Georgia, & Massachusetts -- & apt
to become illegal in other s tates because of what happened in Tasmania
(where once introduced they spread rapidly & displaced native species);
plus there have severe restrictions on breeding & selling in all states.
Rats are legal except in one part of Canada, & require no special
hard-to-get licenses.
Rats easily become the best of pets; Sugar Gliders can be just as
rewarding but it's not as easy a guarantee.
-paghat the ratgirl
--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/
Sue Schultz
"paghat" <pag...@netscapeSPAM-ME-NOT.net> wrote in message
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Tracey
Tracey