a few weeks ago my daughter was watching Animal Planet and it was showing a special on Koalas "Koala Hospital" and they had brown(copper) rear ends like our boys. They found it was Chlamydia and are pretty sure it was stress related. Which got us wondering, is it possible that gliders being Marsupials as well might have this as well and we are chalking it up to bad grooming or diet related issues? Just a question. I posted this at the Sweet Spot and got no responses. I may have posted it in the wrong spot though.

I just did a few quick searches and just about all of the references that I could find for Chlamydia/psittacosis was linked to birds. There was one that had a statement to include that mammals are at risk. I was not able to find any cases of this in sugar gliders. I am no expert and honestly...just searched for this information. Perhaps someone a bit more senior on the medical side can offer you more information. Here is a link to a veterinary article that outlines the transmission, symptoms, diagnostics, treatment, etc. I suppose if someone had birds near gliders and the birds had this...there could be a risk? I am just not 100% sure. I would imagine that you would have seen the other symptoms if this was an issue for your little guys though. Anyhow, enjoy that read!


www.nasphv.org/Documents/Psittacosis.pdf

The thing is Gliders are fairly new and not much has been studied so I would imagine it could be a distinct possibility.

It may be something that has been misdiagnosed....have you tried getting on the Australian forum and asking them?

http://www.marsupialsociety.org/

Never mind. It is such a long shot.

I only breezed through this but there have been a number of other studies linking chlamydial diseases to marsupials. I am not sure if any have been done on gliders

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