Why do animals reject their young?

Question

Recently I have read many news stories about baby animals who were rejected by their mother, then another animal takes them in and/or nurses them. Like the dog that nursed the tigers. Why do the mothers reject them?

Answer 1

Sometimes a mother raised in captivity won't know how to care for her young and reject them simply because she hasn't been taught any better.  Other times, if one offspring is weak or defected, the mother will reject that animal so as to care for the healthier ones, giving them a better chance at survival than if she spent precious energy on a "runt". It's said that black leopards are sometimes rejected by their moms because of their color, but its actually because most captive black leopards are inbred, causing poor temperment and issues with care for cubs. This probably applies to other endangered animals like tigers, cheetahs, etc because their gene pools are so small they are almost certain to inbreed and have less than favorable results from it.  

Answer 2

Many animals will reject their young if the young has a deformity.  They will do this on instinct so that the strongest animals will survive thus evolving their species and cleaning the gene pool.

Answer 3

I don't know if there is a reason why.  

A lot of the times it seems to be first time moms that reject or abandon their young. They just don't seem to know that the thing they gave birth to is their young or they don't realize how to care for it.

I've see and animal give birth once, then look at the baby like "what is this?", I don't remember if it nursed it or not.

http://www.theadventuresofabby.com/

.... Safari Zoological Park owner Tom Harvey said the tiger cubs were born Sunday, but the mother had problems with them.

A day later, the mother stopped caring for them. Harvey said the cubs were wandering around, trying to find their birth mother, who wouldn’t pay attention to them. That’s when the cubs were put in the care of a golden retriever, Harvey said....

http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=21012&te...

...n an echo of the situation last year in which an infant gorilla was abandoned shortly after birth by its mother, zoo officials said Hadiah has refused to care for the baby.

“It’s not looking entirely promising, but we’ll keep trying,” said Dina Bredahl, animal area supervisor. ...

... “Every day we try to give Hadiah the option to come pick the baby up,” Bredahl said. “She seems a little bit nervous. It doesn’t seem she knows what to think of him.”

Parenthood doesn’t always come naturally to primates. Although they are intelligent, if they lack experience with parenthood, they don’t know how to handle a baby. ...

http://www.sandiegozoo.org/adopt/babies....

...For a smaller number of Zoo babies, for one reason or another (normally the mom or baby is sick), the two need to be separated and we have to raise the little ones at one of our two nurseries....

http://cbs3.com/local/tiger.cub.pittsbur...

The staff at the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium will take over mothering duties of an Amur tiger cub who has been shunned by his mother.

The cub was born Sunday but his mother, Toma, has refused to nurse him.

Zoo officials gave the mother a drug to stimulate milk production, thinking that might jump start her maternal instincts.  But that hasn't happened....

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gE-z...

...The panda and another sibling were initially accepted by their mother but a day later were found to have been abandoned. They were also suffering from hypothermia....

http://www.readingeagle.com/article.aspx...

...Six-week-old Mary Two, who also was suffering from hypothermia, was admitted to the intensive care unit at the University of Muenster's clinic on Saturday and discharged a day later.

Joerg Adler, director of the northwestern city's Allwetterzoo, said Monday the baby's mother, Gana, had been interested in rejoining other gorillas "and then she started to neglect her child a bit."

When the baby was found in a weakened state in her mother's arms on Saturday, "I said, now we are going to separate the two and at least we are trying to save the life of the baby," Adler told RTL television. "And this was ... just in time."...

Answer 4

Animals raised in captivity do this, as they have never been taught how to care for their young.

Animals in the wild will be raised in an environment where they see young being born each year, and how their 'family' deal with the young.

If animals are taken away from this natural environment at an early age they are not given the chance to learn this skill.  So, when they have babies of their own, they don't know what to do with them.

However, if an animal is taken from a natural environment it is not always a lost cause.  if they are 'rescued' and allowed to live in social groups with their own kind, they can relearn this behaviour and have been known to raise their own young just fine.