Where is the sugar glider legal?

The department may not issue a permit for the capture, possession, import, or export of any game animal, including a hybrid of a game animal and a species listed in (b) of this section, for use as a pet

Absent from the clean list, and subsection (c) closes the permit route for anything kept as a pet. This is the trap in Alaska: it is not a list of banned animals, it is a list of allowed ones.

How this rule works: The strictest structure in the country and the clearest. Subsection (a) bars possessing live game without a permit, (b) is a short clean list of species needing no permit, and (c) then removes the escape hatch: the department may not issue a permit for any game animal for use as a pet. So an animal missing from the clean list cannot be kept, permit or not.

Order Marsupialia-Marsupials or Pouched Animals: All species (W)

How this rule works: § 671(b) defines (D) detrimental and (W) welfare. § 671.1(a) lists permit types; none covers pet keeping. The only possession permit, Animal Care, requires lawful possession in California before January 1992.

A marsupial, so the 'domesticated rodents and rabbits' category does not reach it.

How this rule works: Closed list. Seven permitted categories; everything else is barred as a household pet.

All marsupials, including ... numbat and pigmy, sugar and greater glider.

How this rule works: § 161.01 is the list of animals that may not be kept in the five boroughs. It binds regardless of what New York State allows, which is why the city and the state answer differently for several species.

all bears, coyotes, lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cheetahs, cougars, wolves and any crossbreed of these animals which have similar characteristics in appearance or features

Same agency interpretation as the hedgehog, and the same pending bill covers both. A marsupial has nothing in common with any animal the definition names.

How this rule works: The definition names bears, coyotes, lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cheetahs, cougars, wolves and their crossbreeds, and none of the animals in this dataset. The entire prohibition rests on four words earlier in the sentence, includes, but is not limited to, which the Game Commission reads as reaching small exotic mammals. That is an agency interpretation of a definition rather than anything a legislature wrote about these species, which is why bills to reverse it keep being introduced.

The prohibited list names kangaroos and wallabies but not gliders, so it falls to the general exotic animal permit rather than the ban.

How this rule works: An exotic animal is 'ecologically foreign to Delaware, but allowed for possession, sale, and exhibition if a permit has been issued by the Department', covering live wild mammals, hybrids of wild mammals, and live reptiles not native to the state. A prohibited sublist sits on top, barred to everyone outside parks, zoos, aquariums, museums and research facilities. Administered by the State Veterinarian.

How this rule works: 4.4 is a closed exempt list; 4.5 requires a permit for 'any other' exotic species not exempted.

Petaurus breviceps (sugar glider) may be sold, purchased, exhibited, or held as a pet without a license or permit if the owner thereof possesses valid documentation that the animal originated from a source inspected and regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture

Group assignment unknown; unlisted defaults to Group IV.

How this rule works: Four groups. Group I is semi-domesticated and needs no importation permit; Group IV is 'dangerous, invasive, undesirable, state or federal listed threatened, endangered, a furbearer or any other species of concern' and is barred to the general public, allowed only for scientific study, restoration, zoological display, temporary events, service animals or qualified experts. The operative default: 'Any species of live non-domesticated animal not currently on the species importation list will be designated group IV until such time as another determination is made by the director.' The group assignments themselves live in a separate Director's Species Importation List, roughly 27 pages, which I could not obtain.

Same gap. Secondary sources openly disagree on whether Vermont requires a permit for sugar gliders, which is itself a reason not to assert one.

How this rule works: Closed list. § 4709 bars bringing in, transporting or possessing any live wild bird or animal without authorisation. Reg 881: 'the Commissioner shall not issue a permit for the keeping or possession of any wild animal in captivity, except for bona fide scientific or educational purposes' unless the species is designated domestic, a domestic pet, or unrestricted. The Unrestricted Wild Animals List is maintained separately on the department website and was not obtainable.