Hi,

Wondering if anyone can help. I'm trying to learn what sugar gliders are like in their natural habitat as regards their calls.

For example - do they bark often per day? When they do bark, can it be just briefly and can it be for ages? Is there any pattern? Might they bark one day but not another? Why?

I have 4 gliders, and one of them will bark occasionally at night. Who knows why they bark. Maybe they see something or hear something or want some attention.

I've always had my theories on sugar gliders barking, but I've never seen it backed up in any papers regarding them, especially in the wild. There is not much material on sugar glider behaviour in their natural habitat.

Sugar gliders live in very, very large colonies in the wild. Up to around fifteen?
The fact of the matter is that sugar gliders bark for many different reasons, it seems.

Other gliders seem to listen rather closely when another starts to bark, especially if it's one of their own cagemates. I think it's just a basic communication noise? Sometimes it seems like a warning signal to others, in my opinion, just based on how closely other gliders will pay attention, but they also don't sometimes too.

Mine typically stop barking if I open the door and check on them, but occasionally not, too. Some have said it's a loneliness thing, and a way to attract attention, which is probably not entirely incorrect, especially with captive bred pet sugar gliders. Mine usually do it if they're still hungry, but that wouldn't be accurate wild glider behaviour ..

Barking is too much of a generic noise to really pinpoint what it is in gliders, I think. There's a lot of 'variations' of barking, too. Sometimes a TON of gliders will bark at the same time. No idea what's that about. Locating eachother?

So far I've noticed a "warning" bark (which sounds like a siren to me), a "lonely" bark, and a "feed me" bark. I'm sure he has others and I don't understand them or I just can't think of them right now, but if you pay really close attention to them and what they're doing at the time you can sometimes understand it, like you would understand a dog's bark.

I've recently realized that when my glider, Maximus is barking incessantly it's when he can hear the coyotes howling outside.
He also gives 1 bark in his pouch occasionally since he's been caged with my older glider, Minnie. not sure what that's about. Minnie hardly ever barks so it's harder to tell what it is she is barking about.

Sometimes mine don't make any nouse at night other times all I hear is barking usually from midnight to 3 or 4 am I've no idea why. We have 2 dogs and a cat but they are locked out of the gliders room at night.