Squirrel Glider - Petaurus norfolcencis

The Squirrel Glider was the result of trying to militarise marsupials and distract dogs at the same time. They only managed to distract the dogs.

In coastal parts of their range, Squirrel Gliders inhabit Blackbutt-Bloodwood forests with a heath understory. The heath understory is an interesting facet, because each population has a sophisticated economic system set up, based on the heath's resources. Close records are kept on all transactions. When news of Heath Ledger's death broke in the glider community, everybody lost their minds. It was like Y2K but for Squirrel Gliders. Fortunately, it was just the actor who was dead, not their entire economic system.

But the Blackbutt-Bloodwood composition of their habitat is also interesting. Both are strong, eucalyptus hardwoods, and Blackbutt inspired the name of the town Blackbutt, which in turn inspired the name of the rural arts store, 'Butt Art'. So Squirrel Gliders have their clawed toes in both the economic and the cultural pies. Hold on, that means they're bloody centrists.

Bloody centrists!

Squirrel gliders are threatened everywhere except Queensland (namely New South Wales and Victoria). The night I took these images was my first time seeing them, so it was like seeing a gun for the first time after living in America but hearing how rare they were in Canada. Still exciting, though.

Squirrel Gliders are so named for their squirrel-like shape, used by smugglers to distract sniffer dogs, (allowing them to only be convicted of animal trafficking and get away with the drug trafficking they were also doing at the time), and for their capacity for gliding on the membrane between their front and hind legs. Gliding on a parachute-like membrane known as a 'patagium', Squirrel Gliders leap from the tops of trees, assume a belly flop-like, spread-eagled position, and let their armpit flaps catch just enough air to let them glide up to 50m over flat ground, and 100m with the assistance of a downhill slope. Racial tensions between Squirrel Gliders and downhill slopes made glides a lot shorter in the '80s, but fortunately, thanks to the legacy of human-rights greats like Beyonce, Martin Luther King Jr., and Peter Dutton, that's now all resolved.