THANK YOU!

I've always had a hard time with that... I say eat it all.. or don't eat any of it... don't pick and choose based on cuteness and likeability, which you know is what we do now. We SAY its the Pain factor or the lack of brain factor, lol. But it really comes down to people not wanting to eat the CUTE animals. Some cultures are past this and will eat whatever is edible! Good for them. But seriously. Save Flipper, but eat Charlie the Tuna? People Cry out when we kill Bambi, but its good eats... it's just hard for most to watch.



As far as feeding "other" live food... After a TON of research in the last few days, my eyes my just fall out, I have decided that I'm going to stick to bugs, mainly meal, wax, and super worms, beetles, moths, and larva. I am headed for the closest to natural diet as I can muster. I am on a serious mission to recreate their natural diet as closely as I can. I will of coarse be offering a proven diet while making this attempt, but do plan to continue my research as I am finding that most of the current diets being offered are a far cry from what they actually eat in the wild. Furthermore, it is my opinion that just because they are generations removed from the wild, that their digestive systems remain the same and were designed for a specific diet. That diet was never meant to include processed foods or cooked proteins.

Anyway... I don't even know where I was going with this, lol my daughter pulled me away... But the long and short of it is... I'm sticking with bugs. lol

I hope I didn't come off as some uppity know it all, cause I don't know smack in the grand scheme of things, do any of us really? I'm still learning. I just want to find the best way to provide the best environment and diet for my babies as I can. Its the least I can do for them.

LOL funny Bambi story...

My grandma and my aunt took me to see the movie when it first came out in the theater. Apparently, during the scene where Bambi's mother gets shot when it's dead quiet, I decide to stand on my seat, point at the screen, and yell "MY DADDY SHOT HER!! MY DADDY SHOT HER!!" Oh goodness...

OMG! That is TOO funny! I can just see you!

I love it!

Interesting. I have thought about this myself.

I would think it difficult to provide a completely natural diet. In the wild, it varies due to seasonal availability. At certain times of the year, they eat more saps and gums, and at other times, more bugs (or even birds and small mammals). It also varies by the availability in the region. In the wild, gliders have a breeding season, as opposed to their captive counterparts. This is also due to the availability of foods necessary for breeding (those that will help a growing joey, milk production, sustaining mom, etc).

In the UK if we were to feed any live invertebrates (and we were found out) we'd have the RSPCA come down on us like a ton of bricks! Personally I couldn't do it anyway, we have snakes but we feed only defrost rodents to them. I couldn't feed lizards because I love the little anoles, they're tooooooo cute.

But, thinking about it, if you're trying to get the diet as close as poss to a natural wild diet then why feed anoles? Anoles are found in America and the Caribbean, surely hard shelled insects would be closer to a suggie wild diet.

7glider7 - I think it's interesting you brought that up. I know this is semi-childish, but have you seen the movie Madagascar? (sp?) The whole movie deals with the fact that when the group of mixed animal friends is shipwrecked on the island of Mad. the lion buddy is so tempted by hunger to eat his friends, at the end they find peace when the (really cute) peguins discover that the lion likes fish. So the movie basically said that eating animals is like eating friends but who cares about fish.

Wantiki-you can get waxworms and let them turn into moths. I've fed those before, and the gliders loved them, although they didn't fly much.

Yep, wax worm moths!

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the c to p ratios and in the wild they spend MONTHS feasting on mostly insects. This does not adversly affect their health at all. Yet some of out diets are limiting them to only a couple a night? I'm sure they are catcing many more than that on their own if they are to thrive, afterall its during that time that they are breeding, correct? So given that these bugs, for a lack of a better term, have such a poor c:p ratio, I wonder what the true ratio is. When I say true ratio... I mean the nutrional value of the parts of the bug, lets use the meal worm as an example since almost all of us feed them, is. Take away the exoskeleton and the other parts that a glider might spit out and examin the juicy guts that they do eat and what is the value of that?? I think we would find that the c:p ratio is far different than the current charts show, and it will be in favor of the Glider! I would go on to further include in my theroy that more of their potien should come from bugs than artifical means such as suppliments. The argument that they may be prone to becomming overweight as a result of the extra fats only opens up the topic of proper accomidations and lack of exercise. Gliders do need fats in their diet... where else would they get them in the wild?? When eating a diet weighted so heavily with bugs for so many months out of the year, they manage just fine.

Seriously, I am just a bit consumed lately. I'm going to see what I can do about geting the nutrional values of a partial meal worm, wax worm and maybe a couple other bugs. I am VERY interested in this...

OH! And I bought a Eucyalyptus tree yesterday! And discovered quite a few of them in and around town that I can clip from, ones that I am POSITIVE are not ever sprayed with anything. I have a huge branch, two inches in dia, for them thats going intoday! yeah!

Thats debatable Kathryn...I've read studies of gliders in their natural habitat eating mainly pollen...do a search for acacia and bee pollen and quite a few links come up...

Excellent....

Maybe I'm wrong, but perhaps an unbalanced diet gliders may or maynot experience in the wild has something to with their ave 7 year life span compared to living in captivity where they can live twice that long. I know in the wild there are a lot more predators than in our homes, but maybe the diet thing could have something to do with it!

I dunno KittyKatRynn...I believe gliders instinctively know what they need, diet wise.

I would love to see the studies done on the life span of gliders in the wild...I mean how they heck do you track a suggie out in the middle of nowhere?

I think the 7 year number (though, I've heard 4-6 in the wild) accounts for predation. I believe the lifespan you are referring to is just that, how long they would live based on "old age" and health issues that go along with this. If 7 were just an average, then it would be horribly skewed to the low end, as gliders have a rather high first year mortality rate.
I think a completely wild diet would be impossible to recreate. Most of our gliders are at least several generations removed from their wild counterparts. Additionally, as I've already mentioned, diet varies depending on region--and I don't know of anyone that knows what region their gliders came from. Fruits and veggies are not a part of a wild diet at all--I believe fruits are there mainly there to mimic saps, manna, and honeydew (no, not the melon).
As far as seasonal ability, and captive gliders receiving protien sources on a more regular basis.. My guess is that would be based on the idea of optimal conditions year round, as opposed to only certain times of the year--such as a % of proteins, fruits, and veggies offered daily. It is even recommended that breeding pairs be given increased protein and calcium amounts to aid in milk production and help mom recoup the loss of this while carrying/nursing joeys.
I don't even know of zoos that feed a 100% (or even close to it) natural diet. Because of so much variation, availability, etc, it's near impossible to mimic it. Not to mention the cost, especially to those living in areas where several of the items are not readily available or need to be imported.

Insects and gums are their primary diet in the breeding season, and YES! Acacia is a gum and they also eat bee pollen I totally agree!!!

For part of the year they cant even get insects really...
which is when their breeding stops, that explains why gliders in the wild have a breeding season and gliders in captivity do not. In captivity have access to the protein year round thus giving them the ability to provide the necessary nutrition to their offspring so they can continue to produce. In the wild they only have access to that diet for a limited time, thus a breeding season. its documented that their diet changes with the seasons.

But for that part of the year they do eat mainly insects and gums. Or at least every paper, study, and environmental report I have read so far has said as much. So that's what I am going off of.

If we want to continue to offer a happy medium between the two, we can do so by combining the two, which is what most approved diets are replicating already, its just that many of them are using cooked proteins and processed foods. That's the think I'm not so keen on.

I'd like more of the good stuff to be natural, that's all....

Gina your right, it would be impossible to replicate their diet 100%.

I'm lucky to have access to the trees that I do, thanks to the good ol gold rush, he he he, lots of them were imported straight from Australia way back when. The oils were a huge help to the folks when it came to mining gold.

But they don't grow everywhere.

I'm not saying that we should all start screwing with proven diets, I'm just thinking out loud and hoping for input as I try to form some ideas here. I'm a natural kind of person and I'm just thinking that a more natural approach would be nice, but it may not even work?? who knows... Like I said, I'm just thinking out loud.

KittyKatRynn, I DID see Madagascar...and I remember thinking, "he's a LION, of COURSE he's going to eat you, how can you be mad at him for that? Pick an herbivore as a friend!" I actually failed to see the irony of the fish until you pointed it out though.

This is just me being the cynical zoologist though

I will admit myself that despite seeing the lack of logic in feeling that feeding a mouse is "worse" than feeding a mealie, at a gut level, feeding mealies and crickets doesn't bother me, and actually, I haven't fed pinkies but that wouldn't bother me much...but feeding fuzzies or anoles would.

I don't really have any good reasoning to back that up. It may be because I had an anole for a pet once, and while I also had several mice as pets, I was accustomed at an early age to seeing my 6th grade teacher's boa constrictor eat full grown mice.

So even though it doesn't make much sense, intuitively, I think we feel uncomfortable using animals that we have an emotional attachment or somehow "relate to" (we are more likely to relate to a mammal than an arthropod, in all likelihood) as food items. It doesn't make sense on a biological basis. It is a subjective, emotional thing.

Anyways...back to diets...Kathryn, when you get that diet worked out, I'd love to hear what you are feeding. I think I am actually going to be switching my guys to a diet that one of my glider's breeders used that emphasizes natural ingredients like acacia gum and bee pollen (eucalyptus).