Hi there,

I currently have a colony of 3 sugar glider, 2 females and 1 male. 1 female I rescued from someone else, her brother passed away, and I added the other 2 to create a colony of 3.

In the past, I have had problems with the male being slightly more aggressive towards me and towards the females. He has never allowed me to hold or pet him, and he is constantly crabbing at the other 2. I had considered moving him out of the colony, but the arguing became less frequent and I thought they had worked out their differences.

Lately, I have noticed that the male has a bald spot on his back. It is not in the usual spot for him to be grooming himself too much, but it below his neck on his back.

Tonight something really strange happened and I'm not really sure what I should do. The tame female (she usually sits in the hammock happily or climbs to the corner of the cage and watches everyone else) has started clinging onto the backs of the other 2 and aggressively either grooming or biting the backs of their necks. This irks the others and they try to run away/roll away/start crabbing until they can finally get away, and the tame female waits until someone is close to her again and then does the same thing. When she gets sick of this she goes into the hammock and waits, and whenever one of the other gliders enters the hammock there is a lot of crabbing. There are multiple pouches and hammocks in the cage but they all frequent the same one.

What should I do? Do I need to separate them?

Any help or guidance is greatly appreciated...

Best,
Skylar

It sounds like that one female has decided she wants to be boss of the colony and she is showing them who is boss.

How many feeding stations do you have in the cage? Seeing as you have some bickering going on I would have 3 feeding stations on different levels of the cage if you can.

As long as she isn't making wounds on them, let them sort this out for themselves.