A wonderful thing just happened at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, NSW. At least five feathertail glider joeys were born in a rare breeding success.
Two of the gliders are ready to leave the nest box while three more are still without fur, blind and sucking their mother’s milk. This was announced by the Zoo.
” We were the first Zoo to ever breed these tiny marsupials so it’s always exciting when we see joeys start to emerge, ” said Rob Dockerill, the Australian Fauna Keeper.
These tiny tiny mammals are born in the size of half of rice grain, that’s really tiny. ” They than spend 63 days in the pouch emerging furless and blind. The mothers only weigh 15g, so by the time the joeys reach nesting size, mum’s feet would not touch the ground.
The oldest of the five new joeys that joined the world is about 14 weeks old now and he will soon join around 30 other feathertail gliders at the Zoo and be out of the nest. ” We’ve found that having a large group of gliders help them breed, since we started breeding them in 1988 we’ve seen up to 200 joeys emerge, in that same time only a handful of other gliders have been breed in other Zoos. Rob explained. Bask in their glory with the images below:
Source: Australian Geographic
