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Kangaroo is the national symbol of
Australia. It can be seen in a lot of Australian products,
souvenirs, and company and organization logos. It is somehow
curious to know why, of all the animals in Australia, why
the Kangaroo as the national emblem? The kangaroo is
considered to be one of the most interesting animals on the
planet.
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Although kangaroos are popular
and known as the mammal with a pocket on the tummy
all over the world, still very little is known by
most people. These marsupials are endemic to the
land of Australia. Although they have a short life
span of four to six years and are almost always
killed in traffic or hunting, the kangaroos have
managed to stay alive and thrive in abundance all
over Australia.
Belonging to the Macropodidae family, or animals
with large feet, kangaroos are the one and only big
animals that use jumping or hopping as its primary
way of moving about.
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It can move as fast as 70
km/hour if it needs be. But this is only possible
with short distances. Its normal and comfortable
speed is at around 25 km/hour.
However, it can carry on a 40
km/hour speed for a two-kilometer run. Kangaroos are
pushed to a higher speed not by predators that go
after them, as they only have a few natural
predators, but by the need to cover far distances in
search of food.
So, it is more for economical
reasons than for survival purposes. The roos, as
they are colloquially called, have a lot of kindred
in the Macropodidae family. There are around 50,
although smaller, species of cousins. Of these,
there are four that are larger and more popular and
more recognizable as kangaroos. |
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And they are: the Antilopine Kangaroo,
which lives in the far-northern part of Australia; the
Eastern Grey Kangaroo, which as the name suggest, lives in
the eastern part of the land; the Red Kangaroo, the largest
of the family and boldly roams the arid center of Australia;
and lastly, the Western Grey Kangaroo, which dominates the
southern area of Southern and Western Australia.
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What is most interesting in Kangaroos
is their child-bearing. The female kangaroo, which is known
in various names, is eternally pregnant. How is this
possible? Well, the female gives birth to its “joey” (baby
kangaroo) when it is only 31-36 days of its gestation.
The
newborn joey is released to the pouch, where it sucks on the
mother’s teat until it grows big enough to jump out from
time to time. This development takes about nine months.
It
will still come back to the pouch and stay until the 18th
month, when it can totally separate from the pouch and not
return again. |
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Now, while the baby joey is already in the pouch, the mother
is again sexually ready to conceive another baby. Hence, when the mother mates while she
is still nursing a joey in her pouch and still technically
pregnant, it is possible that she will get pregnant again.
The interesting part is that the
female, or the doe (flyers or jills) as it’s sometimes
known, has the ability to delay the development of the new
joey until the first joey is old enough to get out of the
pouch. This is not a problem at all because joeys develop
fast and can be ready to be up and about in 190 days. |
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