kangaroo

The giant grey kangaroo may reach a weight of 90 kg/200 lb and a height of over 1.5 m/5 ft. Like the red kangaroo, the grey kangaroo lives in small herds, sheltering by rocky outcrops during the heat of the day and emerging during the night to feed and drink.

Any of a group of marsupials (mammals that carry their young in pouches) found in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Kangaroos are plant-eaters and most live in groups. They are adapted to hopping, the vast majority of species having very large, powerful back legs and feet compared with the small forelimbs. The larger types can jump 9 m/30 ft in a single bound. Most are nocturnal. Species vary from small rat kangaroos, only 30 cm/1 ft long, through the medium-sized wallabies, to the large red and great grey kangaroos, which are the largest living marsupials. These may be 1.8 m/5.9 ft long with 1.1 m/3.5 ft tails. (Family Macropodidae.)

In Papua New Guinea and northern Queensland, tree kangaroos (genus Dendrolagus) occur. These have comparatively short hind limbs. The great grey kangaroo (Macropus giganteus) produces a single young (‘joey’) about 2 cm/1 in long after a very short gestation, usually in early summer. At birth the young kangaroo is too young even to suckle. It remains in its mother's pouch, attached to a nipple which squirts milk into its mouth at intervals. It stays in the pouch, with excursions as it matures, for about 280 days.

A new species of kangaroo was discovered 1994 in New Guinea. Local people know it as ‘bondegezou’. It weighs 15 kg/33 lb and is 1.2 m/3.9 ft in height. As it shows traits of both arboreal and ground-dwelling species, it may be a ‘missing link’.

In January 2002, the Australian government approved an increase in the number of kangaroos and wallabies that can be killed for commercial purposes. A total of 6.9 million animals, an increase of about 1.5 million from the previous year, may legally be killed each year. Conservation groups said the increase was unsustainable, but the government was keen to support the kangaroo industry, which is worth an estimated A$200 million a year.