Short-head gliding bag
| Short-head gliding bag | ||||||||||||
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A short-head glide bag |
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| Petaurus breviceps | ||||||||||||
| Waterhouse , 1839 |
The Kurzkopfgleitbeutler ( Petaurus breviceps , also called Sugar Glider ) is a common type of glider (Petauridae) in Australia and New Guinea . In some regions of Australia it is one of the most common mammals, but is rarely seen because of its nocturnal way of life.
features
Short-head glide pouches reach head-trunk lengths between 16 and 21 cm; there is also the tail, which is about the same length. The average weight of the male is 130 g, while the female is significantly lighter at only around 90 g.
The underside of these slide bags is light to medium gray in color and sometimes with a hint of yellow; the top is gray or brown. A brown-black band leads from the snout over the vertex and back to the base of the tail, although there are certain differences between the individual subspecies . The insides of the ears and the nose are pink, the eyes deep black. As with all Diprotodontia (the marsupial order , to which the glideslope also belong), the second and third toes of the hind feet are fused together, while the first toe is opposable and has no claws. The front legs have five fingers, the fourth being elongated and having a particularly sharp claw that the animal can use to pull insects out from under tree bark, for example.
The thin, hairy flight membrane extends from the wrists to the ankles and has a rectangular shape when gliding. When the animal sits on a branch, the membrane curls and makes the glider appear plump. The long, bushy tail is colored white-gray at the tip and has an average of 4 cm long hair. It cannot be used as a real gripping tool, but it can be used as an aid in collecting leaves and holding onto branches.
Both sexes have a secretory gland on the anus . The male has two more on the forehead and chest, while the female still has a gland in the pouch that only becomes active when there are young and then secretes a brownish liquid. The pouch is on the ventral side and contains four teats.
Like most nocturnal animals, the Kurzkopfgleitbeutler also has good hearing and a keen sense of smell with which it can recognize the members of its group. He also has good and slightly protruding eyes that allow him a relatively good panoramic view. To the key he uses his 10 to 15 whitish vibrissae (whiskers). Various screeching calls are used to communicate between group members. The alarm call is a high-pitched yapping ("wok-wok-wok"), while the fear call is a high-pitched screeching.
Way of life
Kurzkopfgleitbeutler are sociable and nocturnal tree dwellers that live in groups of up to twelve animals. Usually six adults and their young come together in such groups. The group sometimes splits up in summer. Within the group, the ranking is not regulated by fighting, but by the strength of the scent of the secretion. The secretions are also of great importance in other respects: group members often rub the secretions on each other's head or chest with their paws. The greatest activity in this regard is exercised by the dominant male of the association, whose scent all members wear and by which members of a group can identify themselves. If the dominant males of different groups meet each other, violent fights ensue, which are accompanied by hissing noises. The individual associations maintain territories with an area of 0.5 hectares on average.
The life expectancy of the animals is around twelve years in captivity, but four to five years in the wild, but no more than seven years. The special ability of all flying squirrel baggers is their gliding ability. They glide with their flight membrane up to 60 m depending on the jump height and control the flight direction with their tail. During the day they sleep as a group in their leaf nest, which is usually hidden in a knothole. The nests smell putrid as the gliders moisten the leaves with urine so they don't collapse. The leaves needed to build the nest are collected hanging upside down.
Reproduction
The mating takes place in Guinea and in tropical Australia held throughout the year, while in the southeast of Australia in the season between June and November, but usually falls in August it. A female often mates with several males who rub the selected females with forehead secretions on the chest, while the females in turn demonstrate their willingness by rubbing the head against the chest of the male. Before mating, the female's pouch is small and thin-walled. After mating, the pouch wall thickens and the blood vessels and secretory glands in the pouch enlarge.
After the birth, which is preceded by a 16-day gestation period, the bag with the four teats is reduced in size again. The one to three boys (usually two) are only about 190 milligrams in weight at the time of their birth and are blind and helpless. They climb into their mother's pouch and spend about 70 days there, with their hind legs protruding over the edge of the pouch for the past ten days. They spend another 30 to 50 days in the nest, during which their eyes open. Then they can go foraging independently; however, they often keep coming back to the nest. They reach sexual maturity at eight to 15 months.
food
The preferred food of the Gleitbeutler is tree sap, especially from eucalyptus trees and acacias , which are high in carbohydrates . To get the sap, they bite open the bark of trees and lick the sweet sap that comes out. Since eucalyptus trees are a source of food for many animal species and there is therefore high competition, the trees are vehemently defended. Thanks to its flight membrane, the glider can quickly flee in case of danger and otherwise quickly switch between the trees that are suitable for feeding. The animals also eat nectar and pollen as well as protein-rich insects and larvae , whose protein they need especially during the reproductive period. If there is not enough of the required food available during this time, reproductive activities are often stopped.
Spread and threat
The geographical distribution area of the short-headed glider stretches from Tasmania and some islands of the Bass Strait across the north and east of Australia and New Guinea to the islands of the eastern Moluccas , u. a. Halmahera . Gleitbeutler was not originally native to Tasmania, but was introduced there in 1835.
They have been observed at altitudes between 0 and 2400 m and are one of the most common mammals in Australia, but are rarely seen due to their nocturnal activity. The clearing of the sparse forests, which represent their habitat, has a negative effect on the populations of the short-headed gliding poop. Their main natural predators are owls such as the bush owls and, more recently, feral domestic cats .
Systematics
The short-headed glide pouch was first scientifically described in 1839 by the British zoologist George Robert Waterhouse . In the years and decades that followed, other glide pouch species were described, which were often later synonymous with the short-head glide pouch or were assigned to it as subspecies. Seven subspecies are recognized in Mammalian Species , three in Australia and four in New Guinea. In the marsupial volume of the Handbook of the Mammals of the World there are only four, as all short-headed glide pouches that occur outside of Australia are grouped into a subspecies:
- Petaurus breviceps breviceps Waterhouse, 1839; Victoria , eastern New South Wales , southeast Queensland
- Petaurus breviceps longicaudatus Longman, 1924; north and northeast Queensland
- Petaurus breviceps ariel (Gould, 1842); northern Northern Territory , extreme northeast of Western Australia
- Petaurus breviceps papuanus Thomas, 1888; northern New Guinea; Islands: Northern Moluccas (Halmahera, Bacan, Misool), Bismarck Archipelago (New Britain, New Ireland, New Hanover), D'Entrecasteaux Islands
However, it has been suspected for a long time that Petaurus breviceps is not a single, but a complex of different, outwardly very similar cryptic species and that a revision of Petaurus breviceps is necessary to clarify this question. Such a taxonomic study was published in mid-2020 and found that Petaurus breviceps ariel is more closely related to the mahogany flying squirrel bucket ( Petaurus gracilis ) and the mean flying squirrel bucket ( P. norfolcensis ) than it is to Petaurus breviceps . It was therefore granted the rank of an independent species.
In the same investigation it was found that specimens attributed to Petarus breviceps west of the Great Dividing Range differ in their mitochondrial DNA from those east of the Great Dividing Range, so these gliding squirrel bags must be different species. Since the area around Sydney, which is on the coast east of the Great Dividing Range, is given as the Terra typica of Petaurus breviceps, a new species name has to be found for the flying squirrel hives west of the Great Dividing Range. The name Petaurus notatus was available for this, as the terra typica of this species is the large Port Phillip bay on the south coast of Australia, west of the Great Dividing Range.
The glide bags in Australia, originally attributed to Petarus breviceps , are thus divided into three species without subspecies, the North Australian short-head glide bag ( Petaurus ariel ) in the north, Petarus breviceps in the narrow region east of the Great Dividing Range and Petaurus notatus in the large area west of the Great Dividing Range. Petaurus breviceps longicaudatus is added to Petaurus notatus and the gliders introduced by humans to Tasmania are said to be Petaurus notatus . The taxonomic status of the Papuan short-headed glider ( Petaurus breviceps papuanus ) remains uncertain, since only Australian short-headed glidoteers were examined.
The following cladogram shows the family relationships of the Kurzkopfgleitbeutler:
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Man and short-headed glider
Occasionally, the Australian Aborigines eat the meat of the short-headed glider and use its fur. The animals can be easily captured by taking them out of the nests where they sleep during the day. Another method is to lure them by smearing tree trunks with honey (because of their sweet tooth, the animals are called Sugar Gliders in English ).
In central New Guinea, some Papuan peoples believe that magicians turn into short-headed glide pouches in order to spy out potential victims.
Today people are threatening the habitat of the short-headed gliding pouches through the constant deforestation, but so far have not been able to endanger the species as a whole.
The short-head glide pouch is becoming increasingly popular with breeders of exotic small animals and can already be found in some European homes. This custom started in the USA. Critics complain that keeping a nocturnal, sociable and space-consuming animal in an apartment can never be species-appropriate. Above all, the sharp claws and the strongly smelling glandular secretions are arguments that speak against an attitude.
Kurzkopfgleitbeutler can also be seen in German zoos. Particularly in small and medium-sized zoological institutions, these are popular for housing and breeding simple animals with a high level of attractiveness.
Others
The short-headed glider has been known to be a fossil since the Pleistocene . The oldest finds come from a cave near Buchan , Victoria , and were dated to 15,000 BC. Dated.
There are relatively few known parasites of the short-headed glider. It is the main host for the Androlaelaps calypso mite . The mite Mesolaelaps antipodianus , which is normally parasitic on nasal pods, is also often found in the fur of glide pods .
supporting documents
- ↑ a b Stephen Jackson: Family Petauridae (Striped Possums, Leadbeater's Possum and Lesser Gliders). P. 563 in Don E. Wilson , Russell A. Mittermeier : Handbook of the Mammals of the World - Volume 5. Monotremes and Marsupials. Lynx Editions, 2015, ISBN 978-84-96553-99-6
- ↑ a b c d Teigan Cremona, Andrew M Baker, Steven JB Cooper, Rebecca Montague-Drake, Alyson M Stobo-Wilson, Susan M Carthew: Integrative taxonomic investigation of Petaurus breviceps (Marsupialia: Petauridae) reveals three distinct species. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, July 2020; doi: 10.1093 / zoolinnean / zlaa060
- ↑ [1] on Zootierliste.de; Retrieved August 3, 2017
literature
- Birgit Gollmann, Georg Gaßner: Sugar Gliders. Short-head gliding bag. Ulmer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8001-3592-2
- Ronald M. Nowak: Walker's Mammals of the World. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999 (6th ed.), ISBN 0-8018-5789-9
- Meredith J. Smith: Petaurus breviceps. In: Mammalian Species . Washington DC 1973, issue 30, June 13, 1973, pages 1-5, doi: 10.2307 / 3503785
- Caroline MacPherson: Sugar Gliders - everything about Purchase, Care, Nutrition, Behavior, and Breeding. Barron's Educational Series. Hauppauge, New York 1997, ISBN 0-7641-0172-2
- Helen O'Reilly: A New Owner's Guide to Sugar Gliders. TFH Publications, Neptune City NJ 1999, 2002, ISBN 0-7938-2825-2
- Peter Puschmann: The Sugar-Glider (Petaurus breviceps) Natur und Tier-Verlag, Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-86659-045-8
Web links
- Petaurus breviceps in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2016 Posted by: Salas, L. Dickman, C., slipway, K., Winter, J., Ellis, M., Denny, M., Woinarski, J., Lunney, D., Oakwood, M., Menkhorst, P. & Strahan, R., 2016. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
