Can Sugar Gliders Eat Wax Worms?

It’s easy to fall in love with sugar gliders.  They are unbelievably cute and sweet.  Being the lovable fur balls they are, it is no wonder that most sugar glider owners don’t just want to ensure their wide-eyed pals have a healthy diet, they want to go further and spoil their sugar gliders with all sorts of goodies. 

If you’re a regular at your local pet store, you’ve probably encountered the wide variety of insects they carry as food for different animals.  Before you get any new food for your sugar glider, be sure to always look into whether or not that new food is okay for them. 

So, what about wax worms?  Can sugar gliders eat wax worms?  The quick and easy answer is: Yes, sugar gliders can eat wax worms, but you may want to take extra care in how you feed them to your suggies.  Because they are high in fat, wax worms shouldn’t be fed to sugar gliders very often.

How to Feed Wax Worms to Sugar Gliders

The larvae of wax moths are wax worms.  This means that if you keep live wax worms too long, you’ll end up with wax moths in your house.  While harmless, wax moths are probably not something you want flying all around you. 

Because of this if you decide to use wax worms as a foraging treat or in any other way leave the wax worm alone with your glider, you may want to remove the head of the worm first.  You don’t want the larvae of the wax moth to escape!

Some sugar glider owners have reported that their suggies don’t chew wax worms enough.  This can lead to your furry friends with part of a wax worm, or just the casing of the wax worm, stuck in their throats!  There are a few easy ways to avoid this problem.

First, you can hold one end of the worm as you feed it to your sugar glider.  This will allow your furry friend to only have one bit of the worm at a time, which will help you make sure they are chewing their worm up enough between bites and swallows.

The next option might not be a great idea for squeamish folks.  You can cut the wax worm into sugar glider bite sized pieces.  This will also help make sure that your sugar glider takes the time to chew, and if they don’t, they will at least only be swallowing little pieces rather than a whole wax worm! 

Finally, if you can find them, roasted wax worms are available for purchase at some pet shops and online.  Roasted wax worms are fairly brittle so your sugar glider will break them apart as they eat them. 

How Often Can Sugar Gliders Eat Wax Worms?

Wax worms are a very tasty treat for sugar gliders.  Most likely your suggies will devour every wax worm you offer to them.  However, wax worms shouldn’t be fed to your lovable pals very often.

Wax worms have a very high amount of fat in them.  It is probably why sugar gliders love to eat them so much.  Unfortunately, just like with humans, too much fat in your sugar glider’s diet isn’t good.

The other problem with feeding sugar gliders wax worms is that the calcium is almost nonexistent when compared to the phosphorus found in wax worms.  Most sugar glider owners strive to give their pets a calcium to phosphorus ratio of 2:1. So, any time you do treat your suggies to wax worms, be sure to counter it with some high calcium food as well.

How often sugar gliders can have wax worms depends on a variety of factors, such as how active they are and the other foods they regularly eat.  To be on the safe side, many sugar glider owners only treat their suggies to wax worms once or twice a month. 

Others, who don’t mind the extra work of really monitoring all fats, calcium and phosphorus of their suggies’ diets, will feed wax worms once a week or even a little more.

With the cautions mentioned above, if you want to do the work, you can treat your sugar gliders once a week.  Otherwise, be more restrained and only feed wax worms once or twice a month.  

Summary: Can Sugar Gliders Have Wax Worms?

Can sugar gliders eat wax worms? In a word: Yes!  Sugar gliders can eat wax worms rarely.  Be sure to take care in how you feed wax worms to your sugar gliders, you don’t want them to choke! 

Remember, the calcium to phosphorus of wax worms is heavily skewed in the wrong direction, so you’ll need other foods to get ratio back on track for the days you treat your sugar gliders to wax worms.