Kangaroo Life In The Wild

Sometimes humans must care for baby kangaroos.

       For most of the day, there lie sprawled at ease in the shade of a bush or tree, are some of the largest of Australian natives, the kangaroos. Those of one kind have bodies as long as five and a half feet, others are shorter, perhaps not quite four; while still others, sometimes called wallabies, are much smaller. Some kinds live along rocky hillsides, some on open plains, and others in thickets and forests. Some kinds have reddish coats, others are colored gray or brown. But whatever their size, color, or home, most kangaroos are much alike in habits. The coolness of late afternoon wakes them from their dozing and with its new sounds and smells sets at witch the ears and nose of one kangaroo after another. By twilight most of the resting groups, little ones of five animals or big ones of over fifty, have started on their way to the feeding grounds to browse on grasses, shoots and buds on shrubs, or corn and wheat in a nearby farm. In the early morning hours they troop back again to find shelter from the heat of the sun.

       Although the youngest also travel with the older ones back and forth to the feeding grounds, they go unseen, carried invisibly on the body of the mother. The young kangaroo, born in a very undeveloped state, looks more like an inch-long, red and squirming kidney-bean than like either of its parents. Almost immediately after birth, it starts blindly plowing its way up through the fur on the under-side of its mother's body. There, usually within half an hour, unaided by the female, it has reached the mouth of the pouch, a dark and roomy bag but a few inches from where it started the journey. Once inside, it clamps its lips over the milk-source, a nipple, which softens and swells inside the young one's mouth, holding the small animal firmly in place. For almost four months the young kangaroo lies warm and hidden, fastened to the nipple. At the end of that time it has grown a coat of fur, has developed the pear-shaped body and horse-like face of the adult, and is about ready to peer out at the world from the safety of the pouch. Soon it spends more and more time entirely outside these now cramped quarters, but until it is too large to squeeze within, it still jumps for that shelter when something startling comes near.

       Jumping is the chief way in which kangaroos get about and during each leap both tail and legs are almost equally important. The tremendously enlarged, rabbitty-looking hind legs are the levers that shoot the animal ahead, but the long and powerful tail, although it does not touch the ground, is the balance that prevents the body from falling flat. Leaning slightly forward as it goes, the kangaroo covers four or five feet in an ordinary slow-motion hop, but when speeding across a flat plain at perhaps twenty miles an hour, it sails twelve or more feet at a bound. The old males, heavier in body than the females and young animals; can not equal the pace of the others and so bring up the rear of a group on the move.

       The hind legs carry the animals about and protect them as well. The toes are fashioned in a rather peculiar way: the first two are short and slender, and are joined together like a pronged claw by a fold of skin; the next toe is very large and tipped with a powerful, long-pointed claw; the fourth is like the one before it, but is a great deal smaller. On occasion, a kangaroo, pursued by dogs or hunters until it can run no more, will back against a tree and rip and slash at whatever comes within reach of the knifelike nail on each hind foot. Sometimes, too, the males, in play or anger, will spar with each other, using the fore-paws or else, by leaning heavily back on the tail for support, the hind ones.

       Before the time of the white men's settlements in Australia the kangaroos were plentiful. Their only enemies then were dingoes, wedge-tailed eagles, and the native hunters; but now white men and the dogs and foxes which they have brought with them, have lessened the kangaroo numbers. They still live in many parts of Australia, sometimes as close to man as along the outskirts of his towns. Best.

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