site

  1. myWWF Sign in
  2. Sign up
  3. Help
  1. Home
  2. Who We Are
  3. What We Do
  4. About Our Earth
  5. How You Can Help
  6. News
  7. Climate
  1. Home
    1. About Our Earth
      1. Species

Critical Species

2 types of kangaroos, tree kangaroos and the rock wallabies, are classifed by WWF as Critical Species

Kangaroo

Eastern gray kangaroo (Macropus giganteus); on the beach in Australia.

Did you know?

This is the rear foot of the male Grey Kangaroo, showing the long claw. They can use these when fighting a rival.
  • 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.
  • Kangaroos have good eyesight but only respond to moving objects.
  • They have excellent hearing and can swivel their large ears in all directions to pick up sounds.
  • Kangaroos are social animals that live in groups or "mobs" of at least two or three individuals and up to 100 kangaroos.
  • Kangaroos are the only large animals that move by hopping.
  • Most kangaroos can only move both back legs together  - and not one at a time.
  • Male kangaroos "box", either in play, when asserting their dominance or in serious competition over females. The punching of the front legs is pretty harmless, but the powerful hind legs with their long sharp toenails are a dangerous weapon.
  • Kangaroos can disembowel opponents, be it other kangaroos or predators like dogs.
  • A female kangaroo can have three babies at the same time: an older joey living outside the pouch but still drinking milk, a young one in the pouch attached to a teat, and an embryo awaiting birth.
  • In Greek, macropod means “long foot”, which is appropriate as most macropods have very long hind feet with long strong toes.
  • The Western grey kangaroo males are known as stinkers due to their strong, curry-like smell.

Kangaroos include:

Ref: Walker's Mammals of the World Vol I, RM Nowak, 1991
The name kangaroo is used broadly to include all species within the super-family of Macropodidae (or "macropods").

To the right you can see the extended family of macropods...

However, the "true" kangaroos and wallabies as people more commonly picture them in flims and books are in the genus Macropus (under the greater Macropodidea family). These are:

Kangaroos typically have large hind limbs and feet - hence the greek name "marcropod" meaning big foot, and the vary  dramatically in size from 10s of grams to almost 100kgs.

How did kangroos come about?
It was due to massive geological and climatic events in Australia’s history that resulted in the creation of this unique species that we see today, with marsupials having started their unique evolutionary traits some 56 to 34 million years ago.

What are Marsupials?
Marsupials are mammals that have a pouch or ‘marsupium’ in which they raise their young. They include koalas, wombats, possums and dasyurids (small carnivorous marsupials) as well as the macropods.

How many are there?
Between Australia and New Guinea, there are 83 species of macropods, of which 9 have become extinct since European settlement and 28 are now threatened with the same fate.

Effectively then, 1/3 of all macropod species could disppear in the coming years.

The myth of the kangaroo

On the Australian coat of arms, the Kangaroo and the Emu were selected as symbols of Australia to represent progress because they are always moving forward

On the Australian coat of arms, the Kangaroo and the Emu were selected as symbols of Australia to represent progress because they are always moving forward.

There is an urban myth that 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 some people think the kangaroo got its name.

More likely the word kangaroo stems from an Aboriginal language (Guugu Yimidhirr).

The Aboriginal word gangurru described the Grey Kangaroo.

Most people think kangaroos are endemic to (live only in) Australia.

In fact, several species of tree kangaroos and forest wallabies also live in Papua New Guinea.

Find out more about kangaroos and wallabies

Photos and graphics © WWF or used with permission. Text available under a Creative Commons licence. RSS/Web Feeds

@import url('http://s3.amazonaws.com/getsatisfaction.com/feedback/feedback.css');