Diet

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Diet is a very important factor in the healthy keeping of sugar gliders. Many things have been learned about their natural diet and many people have attempted to devise an acceptable captive diet to emulate and/or improve this. It is safe to say that the dietary needs of exotic animals such as sugar gliders are far too numerous to be met by simple off the shelf solutions. Therefore dog and cat food, ferret food, hamster food, pellets of any kind, monkey biscuits and the like are never going to sustain a sugar glider.

Wild sugar gliders are indeed "sap suckers" for at least part of the year. They remove the bark of trees with their long teeth and suck the sap for nourishment. They will also eat bugs, small animals such as mice, birds, and all sorts of other naturally occurring things in the Australian forests. See: Natural Diet

In captivity, sugar gliders do not need as much energy since they do not spend half of their day foraging and running and leaping between the trees. Instead, they need a lower fat and lower carb diet that will keep them in the correct nutrients for a healthy life. There is a lot of ongoing debate and experimentation to this end and because of that we are going to list links and summaries to as many of the "diets" that we can so that you can make your own judgement and do what you think will be right for your sugar glider.

On that note, a growing consensus in our community is that variety is the key. Feeding the same thing all the time every time is a poor practice and does not allow for the varied nutrition that the animals need. Also, adding supplements, especially cheap ones, for the sake of doing it is showing to be a bad practice and a diet full of natural variety is the correct way to feed.