Do sterile males have the urge to mate, or try to mate? Do they have the same "boy" urges that a non-sterile intact male would have?

The sterile males I know do huh Nancy?? I know Dirk does also.

Yes ma'am, they do still have the urge. My understanding is that the urge to mate is hormonal - nothing to do with sterility of the sperm. Sterile gliders still have hormones, so they do still have the urge. Neutering a male will decrease the amount of hormones produced, but some males still have a large amount of hormones and will have the urge to mate even after neutering.

This is one of the reasons that we recommend neutering sterile males as well. There are many benefits to neutering - preventing babies is just ONE of the benefits.

Okay, good! I never considered it one way or another, and tonight there was some serious crabbing going on in Precious, Frog and Gideon's cage. Look and Gideon and Precious are doing "the deed". All I could think is that she can't have more babies! I was mostly worried about more babies.

On the neutering, I have, in the back of my mind, had that as a need for Gideon, eventually.

This is probably a stupid question and if anyone has the time to taech me I'd like to learn.

How does one know that they have a sterile male?

Most of the time they are gliders that come from a known sterile line. Like with the mosaics- early on in the generations only the females produce & the males are sterile. One usually just waits it out to see if they produce but the further out the generations go, the males have a higher chance the sterility is bred out.

Males that come from sterile lines are usually born without testes or if they have them, they never drop or their born with smaller testes than a glider from a producing line. I have 3 mosaics from sterile lines from different generations- 2 of them have (had) testes the size of males from producing lines- 1 of them proved out, the other never did. The pouch twin to one of those mosaics has no testes or they appear too small to feel or they never dropped. His pom sack feels just as a neutered males does - though he has the desire to mate & has a small bald spot, so I assume they are in his body somewhere.

Usually breeders who breed from sterile lines can tell from the development of the males from the line on whether the male joey has the likely hood of proving out the sterility in the line.

Thank you for explaining that to me.

Is there anyone that could help answer this question on GG?

http://www.sugarglider.com/glidergossip/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=31142

I don't know enough about it to answer.