Kangaroo Facts

Said the Duck to the Kangaroo,
"Good gracious! how you hop!
Over the fields and the water too,
As if you never would stop!
My life is a bore in this nasty pond,
And I long to go out in the world beyond!
I wish I could hop like you!"
Said the duck to the Kangaroo.
Edward Lear 1861

Kangaroos (Macropodidae), best known as the large footed, hopping marsupials of Australia, come in a variety of sizes shapes and colors.

In fact, the family, also known as macropods, ranks second only to the opossum family in total number of species (sixty three plus four extinct species). All of them are large footed hoppers, with the females of the species carrying their young in their pouch.

Most Australians learn at an early age that the preponderance of marsupials in their country, including the members of the Kangaroo family, dates back some fifty million years ago, when Australia split apart from the the larger land mass known as Gondwana.

Fast forward some twenty five million years, and a changing Australian climate created boom conditions for Australian animals. Scientists believe that the kangaroo family began to diversity in conjunction with the rise of Australian grasslands some fifteen million years ago.

Today Macropod species inhabit both trees and grasslands, however, the grassland species outnumber the tree species by about a four to one ratio. Additionally, the tree kangaroos, which inhabit some areas of Northern Australia and the Island of Papua New Guinea, rank as the most endangered maropeds, with seven of the fourteen Dendrolagus species listed as either endangered or critically endangered.

Here are some additional kangaroo facts.

Standing over six feet tall and weighing about two hundred pounds, the Red Kangaroo (Macropus rufus) is the largest kangaroo.
Standing about eight inches tall and weighing less than one pound, the musky-rat kangaroo (Hypsiprymnodon moschatus) is the smallest kangaroo.
Size is the biggest difference between kangaroos and wallabies, with wallabies smaller than kangaroos.
Kangaroo and Wallaby teeth also differ with Kangaroo teeth designed for eating grass and Wallaby teeth designed for eating leaves.
Kangaroos do not run, they jump.
Larger kangaroos can jump approximately ten feet into the air and twenty five feet in length.
Four kangaroo species are commercially harvested in Australia (Red (Macropus rufus); Western Grey (Macropus fuliginosus); Eastern Grey (Macropus giganteus); Wallaroo/Euro (Macropus robustus).
Over the past ten years, the Australian government estimates that the population of the four harvested kangaroo species has declined from 57 million to 27 million.

Kangaroo Facts