Savanna Glider

The savanna glider (Petaurus ariel) is a species of arboreal gliding possum in the genus Petaurus, a small marsupial that glides between trees on a membrane stretched along its flanks. It was long treated as a subspecies of the sugar glider, until a 2020 study split the sugar glider into three distinct species and found the savanna glider to be one of them. It lives in the wooded savannas of northern Australia, ranging from northwestern Queensland west through the Northern Territory, including most of the Cobourg Peninsula, to northern Western Australia. It somewhat resembles a small squirrel glider with a pointed nose and varies a great deal in size: in the northern, more coastal part of its range it is the smallest of all Australian Petaurus, while in the arid inland south it can grow to twice that size. In Arnhem Land, breeding is not restricted to a season and young may be born throughout the year, and the Bininj people there call the animal lambalk in Kunwinjku. It is threatened by the declines that have hit many small tree-dwelling mammals of northern Australia, with studies reporting a 35 percent range reduction over three decades and a contraction toward areas of lower fire frequency, linked to feral cats, changed fire regimes and feral herbivores.