Flying High with Sugar Gliders
Meet a high-flyer with a taste for sweet
treats.
The next time you find
yourself in a forest in Australia, look up. You might
just see a small, grey, furry
mammal
with big eyes sailing through the air. These animals are
called sugar gliders. You'd be lucky to see one, ___1___,
because they are small,
timid, and
nocturnal.
If you do get a ___2___ of a sugar glider, you might
notice that when it is soaring
through the tree tops, its skin
stretches out between its arms and legs, almost
in the shape of a square.
This remarkable adaptation allows these
animals to glide gently from tree to
tree by increasing their surface area. Some sugar
gliders can fly for distances of ___3___ one hundred
meters!
If you were gliding through a forest, you would probably
not want to ___4___ any trees. Fortunately, the sugar
glider has a long tail to help it
steer while gliding. It can also move its arms
and legs to steer, and just before arriving at its
destination, it brings its
hind
legs forward ___5___ it can grab
the tree trunk with all four
limbs.
Sugar gliders are a type of
possum
native ___6___ Australia. They get their name from their
___7___ for sweet foods like flower
nectar,
acacia gum, and the
sap
from eucalyptus trees, although they
also eat insects. They rarely
descend to the ground so as
to avoid any predators that
might be waiting there. |