Greater Glider - Petauroides volans

The Greater Glider is at the centre of a lot of controversy regarding ontological worth at the moment. What makes it 'greater'? Is it greater just because it's a larger animal? Or because your worth is measured by the length of your caecum? And does that mean all thin, appendectomised people are in a real double-trouble situation? So many questions. But let's put that to rest. I know why they're greater than all the other, scooter-riding, helmet-wearing glider species. It's because of what's said about their evolutionary history. According to theory, gliders must have evolved by leaping from trees to their deaths, until only those whose armpit flaps could parachute them to safety were left alive. The most glorious part of this is thinking about the conversations that must have happened to convince everybody this was a good idea.

"Hey man if you want to come with us to whittle the gene pool a bit, you're welcome to join, because we're going now."

"What is this, 'The Purge'?"

"It's halfway between that and 'The Passion of The Christ', because we're dying for a righteous cause." "What's the cause?" "Flappier arms." "Oh yeah right - can I join?"

What makes the Greater Glider that much greater, though, is the fact that it had no reason to join in. Greater Gliders are more closely related to Ringtail Possums than they are to the otherwise quite tightly-knit remaining glider species. So there wasn't some family obligation to commit suicide in Tuckshop-Lady-Arms-Gene-Roulette. They probably weren't even friends. They probably didn't even speak the same language. In fact, Greater Gliders are largely mute, so bringing up language is probably a bit touchy touchy. The point is, a parachute-less great granddaddy Greater Glider (or as they were known then, Neutrally Good Tree Marsupial) looked over at the plummeting clump of Petaurids (the family name for almost all other gliders) as they either veered off to a nearby tree or died as they aimed for the bushes, and, without the prompting of anybody around him, must have thought it was also a downright blue-sky idea. The sheer blind majesty of that thought process is, in my opinion, what earns this species its title above the remaining plebeian gliders. (Feathertail Gliders, a mouse-sized glider also unrelated to more common Petaurids, doesn't get this title, because it risked nothing by jumping out of trees. When you throw a mouse off a mountain it falls so slowly you can get to the bottom and catch it anyway. They were just parasites of the vibe.)

Still, though, Greater Gliders are the largest of Australia's gliding possums. Their ≤110cm length is owed especially to their roughly 60cm-long tail. Physically, they are composed 10% of ears, and the remaining 92% is composed of the contents of soft toys. Their gliding membrane spreads from their ankles to their elbows, and as such they fold their fists back under their chin when gliding. They look like a flying shovel.