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A male kangaroo is called a boomer
A female kangaroo is called a flyer
A baby kangaroo is called a joey

When European explorers first saw these strange hopping animals they asked a native Australian (aborigine) what they were called. He replied "kangaroo" meaning "I don't understand" your question. The explorers thought this was the animal's name. And that's how the kangaroo got its name.

A Kangaroo is a marsupial mammal. It is a macropod which means "big foot". There are over 47 different types (species) of Kangaroo. The smaller ones are usually called Wallabies. The largest is the Red Kangaroo. It stands taller than a man and can weigh 85 kg's. It is the largest marsupial in the world.

On the Australian coat of arms the Emu and the Kangaroo were chosen as icons of Australia to represent a country in progress. The reason for this is they always move forward and never backwards.

The kangaroos represent the highest degree of evolutionary development among Marsupials. It is unlikely that such a highly specialized animal as the kangaroo could have evolved if Australia were not separated from the other continents.

Scientists call all kangaroos macropods, which means “animals with big feet.” The feet of large grey kangaroos can be 18 inches long. Hopping is an efficient way to get around – grey kangaroos can reach speeds of up to 55 miles an hour, and actually use less energy the faster they hop. Grey kangaroos have also been known to jump 30 feet in a single bound.

Kangaroos usually have one young annually. The young kangaroo, or joey, is born alive at a very immature stage, when it is only about 2 cm long and weighs less than a gram. Immediately after birth it crawls up the mother's body and enters the pouch. The baby attaches its mouth to one of four teats, which then enlarges to hold the young animal in place. After several weeks, the joey becomes more active and gradually spends more and more time outside the pouch, which it leaves completely between 7 and 10 months of age.

Female kangaroos enter into heat within a few days after giving birth they mate and conceive, but after only one week's development the microscopic embryo enters a dormant state that lasts until the previous young leaves the pouch. The development of the second embryo then resumes and proceeds to birth after a gestation period of about 30 days.

Kangaroos are marsupials, which means “pouched animal.” Grey kangaroos are one of the largest of all kangaroos, weighing between 40 and 150 pounds, and standing up to five feet tall, though an adult male can be as tall as seven feet when standing upright. Females are generally lighter and smaller.

Kangaroos have large, muscular legs and a long, tapered tail almost as long as the rest of the body and capable of supporting the animal’s weight.

When a kangaroo hops, the tail balances the weight of the body and keeps the animal from falling on its face; when seated, the tail acts as a “third leg” for a tripod effect. The kangaroo’s forepaws are small and hand-like, with five digits. A kangaroo will sometimes lick its paws and run them over its fur, just like a cat, which helps it cool off when the weather is hot.

They are grazing animals that eat grass, young shoots and leaves of heath plants and grass trees. Kangaroos need very little water to survive and are capable of going for months without drinking at all.


The kangaroo usually rests in the shade during the day and comes out to eat in the late afternoon and night when its much cooler. It eats mostly grass. It needs very little water to survive. It can survive without drinking for months.

A kangaroo carries its baby in its pouch. The baby is born really tiny and crawls into its mother's pouch. The baby lives in its mother's pouch till its quite large. Even when its quite large it still drinks milk from a teat in its mother's pouch. It sometimes jumps into its mother's pouch head first when frightened.

A male kangaroo is called a buck. It is also commonly called a "boomer" or an "old man". A female kangaroo is called a doe, or a flyer. A baby kangaroo is called a joey.

A newborn kangaroo is even more helpless than a human infant. Blind and the size of a honeybee, the newborn joey is essentially a fetus, still enclosed in a baglike amnion. The tiny creature bursts out of the amnion and immediately "swims" through its mother's fur to reach the pouch. In just three minutes, it disappears over the lip of the pouch. To find its way, the joey uses its sense of smell and built-in gravity receptors (located in the middle ear)--the only two senses that are functional at this point.

When it finds a nipple, the joey latches on and stays physically fused for four to five weeks. Usually the newborn is alone; twins are extremely rare in most macropods. But while a newborn is attached, an older sibling that has left the pouch and is not yet weaned may poke its head in to feed. Each of the offspring feeds only from its own individual teat, and the two teats each supply different mixes of nutrients depending on the age of the young.

 

Important Kangaroo Facts Eastern Grey Macropus giganteus 3 - 8ft (0.9 - 2.4m) 40 - 200 lbs (18 - 95kg) Red kangaroo Macropus Rufus 3 - 9ft (0.9 - 2.7m) 40 - 150 lbs (18 - 70kg) Western Grey Macropus fuliginosus 3 - 7ft (0.9 - 2.1m) 63 - 120lbs (28 - 54kg)

It's one of the mysteries of mammalian locomotion. Like some kind of perpetual motion machine, a hopping kangaroo is able to keep moving while hardly expending any additional energy. In fact, kangaroos actually burn less energy the faster they hop--at least up to their cruising speed of 20 miles an hour.

The mystery surfaced in the early 1975s when kangaroo biologist Terry Dawson of the University of New South Wales in Sydney imported four of the animals to Harvard University so he and Harvard comparative physiologist Dick Taylor could use treadmills to study the animals' energy output.

"Once they get started hopping, they just keep it up," says Dawson. "They must be storing energy like a spring of a pogo stick or the rubber of a bouncing ball."

In addition to their powerful calf muscles, kangaroos have a huge packet of tendons in the tail, attached to their hip bones. A combination of these muscles and tendons helps give the kangaroo a large part of its energy-storing resilience.

The mystery is still not fully solved. "Our first studies used treadmills that humans use, but kangaroos can only hop so fast on these treadmills," says Dawson. "In the wild, their stride can be much longer; the longest one I've measured was 20 feet! So we need to find a bigger treadmill."

The biggest question about kangaroo locomotion is not likely to be solved any time soon: Why did hopping evolve at all? Macropods are the only large mammals that hop. "The evidence is that hopping only evolved once," says Dawson. "But when it did, it gave rise to a huge mass of kangaroos; there are hundreds of species of hoppers in the fossil record, and at least 50 are alive today."

Eastern Grey Kangaroo - Red kangaroo - Western Grey Kangaroo

The Eastern Grey kangaroo can be found in open forest and dense bush of Australia, including Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, S. Australia, and Tasmania. In eastern Australia, annual rainfall produces plenty of vegetation. Grazers, kangaroos prefer grasses, but also eats herbs and shrubs in the wild. At the Zoo, the kangaroos are fed a diet of alfalfa, vegetables, fruits, bread, horse chow, and grasses available in their enclosure.


There is an unconfirmed record jump by an Eastern Grey Kangaroo of 13.5 meters. The record ground speed of 30 mph. When Europeans first saw a jumping animal taller than some of them they asked aboriginals what it was. When a Eastern Grey Kangaroo senses danger, it will thump its hind legs on the ground to warn the rest of the mob.

Grey kangaroos are sociable animals, and are often found in small groups, called “mobs.” Nomadic and mostly nocturnal, grey kangaroos spend the night searching large areas looking for food.


When in danger, kangaroos will beat on the ground with their hind feet. This alarm signal is loud and carries over a long distance. Grey kangaroos have also been seen trying to escape pursuing dogs by entering water up to their chests. When a grey kangaroo is born, it is incredibly tiny — about the size and weight of a nickel.

Blind and only partially formed, the baby must crawl into the mother’s pouch with no assistance at all. There, it will spend another six or seven months drinking milk, growing larger and stronger until it is ready to come out into the world.

The Red kangaroo is the largest marsupial in the world.

The female is often called the "blue flyer" because of her blue-grey fur. In the eastern part males are usually red (pale red to brick red) and females a bluish grey, elsewhere, both sexes may be reddish/brown.Red kangaroos normally move in groups ("mobs") ranging from a few dozen to several hundred animals.

(Macropus rufus) Red kangaroos live in the central area of Australia. Their coloring, which is generally red, closely matches the red soil of the Australian desert outback, giving them a natural camouflage. Females' fur is often more blue-grey in color, and they are often referred to as "blue fliers." Red kangaroos don't see very well close up, but they can spot the slightest movement at great distances. This benefits them in their open desert habitat. Young reds become independent from their mother at an earlier age than the grey kangaroos. In their harsh environment, young kangaroos must learn quickly how to survive if they are to avoid predators such as dingos and eagles.

Western grey kangaroo looks much like the Eastern grey kangaroo, and for many years was treated as subspecies. They vary in color, being anywhere from greyish-brown to chocolate brown. The muzzle is covered in fine hair. The western group is slender and greyish-brown in color, and the southern group is stockier and brown in color.

Western Grey Kangaroos

(Macropus fuliginosus). One of the three largest species of kangaroos, they are the least common in American collections, yet they are the most adaptable to different climates. Eastern and Western grey kangaroos are two distinct species, and are visibly and behaviorally dissimilar. As their name implies, Eastern greys live in the eastern third of Australia.

Western grey kangaroos are native to the southern and western coastal areas of Australia. They have a soft, charcoal-brown colored fur with white fur on the throat, chest and abdomen. Males can reach over 7.5' in body length from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail; females can be over 5.5' in total length. A large male may weight 180 lb., while a large female averages around 70 lb., but some may be heavier.

They have a gestation of 30 days; The joey stays in the pouch for 8 months before venturing out, and does not leave the pouch permanently until 10 months of age. The joey will continue to nurse from the mother for at least another 6 months, even longer if the mother allows it.

The Western Greys have a very close social bond, and retain family connections for years. A daughter often stays close to her mother even after she has a joey of her own. In captivity, they have proven to be very intelligent animals. When they are defensive, they will growl like a dog, which sounds quite intimidating.

Young kangaroos will box playfully. Adult males will box to determine dominance, with the strongest male becoming the head of the mob. ( A group of kangaroos is called a mob.) They prefer to eat leaves and tree bark over grass, if available. In captivity, they are fed a pelleted grain (like a horse or cattle feed) and some fruits and vegetables like bananas or apples, and hay. In captivity, they can live to around 20 years, but are lucky to survive even 10 years in the wild.

Kangaroo habitat facts

Eastern grey kangaroo estimate population in 1996 was 10'000'000

Eastern grey kangaroos distributed throughout most of the eastern third of the Australian continent, especially along the coast in damp forest and scrub. It has increased in numbers since European settlement due to pasture improvement, and the provision of watering points for stock.

Eastern Grey Kangaroo Facts

BODY FACTS:

Kangaroos belong to an order of mammals called Marsupials. In most marsupials, females have abdominal pouches in which the embryonic young continue their development after birth. Kangaroos are the best known of the marsupials. Their long feet have earned them the name Macropod, which literally means "big-footed." Kangaroos move by hopping. When they are at rest, their body is sometimes positioned like a tripod, using the hind legs and tail. Kangaroos also walk on all "fives." The front legs and tail support the body while the hind feet move forward.

BABY FACTS:

At about one month, the tiny embryonic kangaroo emerges from its mother's body and slowly climbs up her abdomen and into her pouch. Once inside the pouch, the newborn latches onto a teat(nipple) which swells inside its mouth. Newborn marsupials do not have the ability to suck. Muscular action from the teat squirts milk into the baby's mouth. Newborns are about the size of a Lima bean. A baby kangaroo spends 7-8 months living and growing inside its mother's pouch. The baby then becomes active outside the pouch, returning only to feed.

When that happens, another baby joey can be born. Then two types of milk can be produced, one for the active joey, and one for the still developing joey inside the pouch. Kangaroos also have a reproductive adaptation called "delayed implantation." The fertilized egg will cease development and wait. Depending on the growth of the joey in the pouch or the weather that season, the fertilized egg will begin development when the mother kangaroo is ready. Eastern grey kangaroos generally give birth to one infant at a time but twins have been known to occur.

HABITAT:

Marsupials are distributed throughout Australia, in some areas of Asia, South and North America. Australia boasts the greatest number and diversity, while the United States is only home to one species, the common or Virginian opossum. Mexico and Central America have other types of opossums.

Red kangaroo estimate population in 1996 was 10'000'000

 

Red kangaroos are distributed throughout inland Australia and occupy mixed habitats of open shrub lands, grasslands, male scrubs, Mulga country, and desert absent from the wetter areas of eastern, northern and south-western Australia.

Western grey kangaroo estimate population in 1996 was 3'000'000

Western grey kangaroos inhabit 60% of western and southern Australia. The southern group can be found in South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales. They live in woodlands, open forests, coastal heath land, open grassland, scrubland and also can be found on city outskirts and golf courses.

Kangaroo numbers are increasing throughout Australia. They are now found in greater numbers than prior European settlement due to provision of pasture and additional water points. Since the extermination of its natural predator, the Tasmanian wolf, and because of its rapid reproductive abilities this animal has overpopulated.

Kangaroo feeding facts

All kangaroos have a chambered stomach similar to cattle and sheep. They regurgitate the vegetation they have eaten, chew it as cud, and then swallow it again for final digestion. The Red kangaroo grazes during the night on a wide variety of grasses and low herbaceous plants, though sometimes this grazing period starts late evening and ends early morning When water is available it will drink but, if it obtains sufficient green food, it does not need to do so.

Western grey kangaroos feed mostly on grass but will browse upon certain native shrubs. They are strictly herbivorous and use microorganisms in the caecum to break down the cellulose of these plants. They can survive on plants high in fiber but low in nitrogen, and require very little water.

The kangaroo fights by attacking its opponent with its front paws (which have sharp claws) or by kicking them with its powerful hind legs.

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