Hi i was just wondering,
a parent glider will reject the joey when it is not ok.
When we hand raise those joeys aren't we bringing bad genes in the population?
I can understand you do this when you nueter the male of the colony but if you don't wouldnt it be a bad thing to hand raise a joey?

There are many reasons why a joey can be rejected, it is not necessarily because of genetic issues (the female can be too young, not have enough milk, there can be conflicts in the colony, stress of any kind or the parents may simply considere that the environment is not good enough to raise joeys).

Our gliders are also mostly outside of natural selection, precisely because they are raised in captivity, I tend to think that 80% of the gliders would not have survived in the wild.

Besides, there are no such things as good and bad genes actually, there are positive or negative combinations between different genes and environment. I think that people put too much credit and beliefs into genetics lately, as if it was the essence of everything, and neglect other parameters (and epigenetics).

The short answer would be, allowing a rejected joey to survive is not a problem if he doesnt reproduce, and is not necessarily a problem if he does either at the condition to avoid inbreeding. (add to this that eliminating the joey from the breeding pool would not erase the "bad" genes from the pool, since those genes are from his parents who have to be carriers, and other joeys from the same couple are also likely to be carriers)

Hi Sjusovare/all,

Thank you for the fast reply, i know genes are passed true by the parents and/or grandparents. Chance of the joey getting these is about 25 % right..
But i see a lot of messages about people preparing for rejected joeys, is this just in case or is it a very common thing?
Because if it is it might be due to circomstances we keep the gliders in and/or due to diet.
A Glider born in captivity wont survive in the wild thats not that hard to believe, thats with most captive bred animals, because they didn't learned about where to get their food from, which dangers there are out there and such.

Its like most humans wont survive without our protected society as well.
But if it is a very common issue than we as community should look for an answer on how it comes that so many joeys are rejected in the conditions we keep the gliders in, and a first joey rejection could be also common in the wild i suppose, maybe hormones arn't produced fast enough te get the mom ready for parenthood since they are only 'preggie' for 16 days..

The truth is that we have no clue of the joey rejection/survival rate in the wild.

In captivity, it does occure, though it's not the rule, and since people usually talk more about problems than about normal things, the topic is quite common. I guess most of people do get prepared just in case following the old motto "better be safe than sorry".