At every zoo I've been to that exhibited sugar gliders (or any type of nocturnal gliding mammal, actually), they are always almost impossible to locate. I've always found this interesting, since a) zoos tend to prefer species that visitors can actually see and enjoy, and b) many people enthusiastically keep them as pets, at least in the United States. I'm wondering if anyone has seen an active group of gliders in a zoo, or an enclosure that highlighted them in a memorable way?
LA’s Australian house is the only zoo I’ve seen captive sugar gliders active recently. They were scuttling around in the trees, mostly, and fun to watch. It was large enough for them to glide but I don’t think I saw them do so. Omaha also used to have them in Kingdoms of the Night in a small exhibit, where they were active, but I believe the exhibit is gone.
Ironically, I've had the opposite experience at LA I've visited that Australian house at least half a dozen times (probably more) and I've only once seen a glider. In fact, the only animal I ever see there are the wombats; the woylies are also consistent no-shows. If you're talking about the big mesh enclosure in the Australian room, the enclosure is still there but I can't remember if it had gliders in it; I certainly didn't see any.
No, it was a much smaller enclosure in the center of the room. I don’t remember it from my visit in 2017. My last visit before that was 2013 and I’m fairly certain it wasn’t there then, either.
I saw them pretty active in Cologne Zoo's night exhibit last year, but never saw them at Rostock's night exhibit (I did see an active echidna in the same exhibit, though), so I guess even darkened exhibits require luck. The least audience-friendly exhibit I've seen is Randers Regnskov's Asia Dome where sugar gliders ranged free in a 700 m2, overgrown rainforest house with daylight only, meaning that nobody ever had a chance to see them in there. I think a few people may have seen them when the zoo had nighttime openings, but even then it was often only as a brief glimpse in a far-away shrubbery. Funnily, the majority of sugar gliders I've seen in my life were as a kid in the local pet store.
Artis over in the Netherlands has a similar thing going on. They're supposedly keeping a sugar glider in a rainforest house alongside some other animals in daylight. They have some visible animal shelters, however during my visit I didn't see the sugar glider whilst trying to look for it.
