Today I'm excited to welcome @PepiSmartDog's Mum Michele Brown as a guest blogger. Since she lives in Australia she has an opportunity to see and interact with kangaroos, which I find amazingly awesome. She has agreed to share her insights about how a baby kangaroo grows up, along with some wonderful pictures.
KANGAROO MOM AND BABY JOEY
It's always a
delight to watch kangaroos grazing happily outside my living room window.
Living in Queensland, Australia we have prolific wildlife, which at times keeps
me busy as a first responder for animal rescue as well as being an RSPCA animal
rescuer. As I write this, there are two teenage kangaroo boys, hanging out....(outside my living room window.)
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| Kangaroos hang out near my home |
My American friends
jokingly call me a Kangaroo Wrestler. Kangaroos are shy and sweet-natured. They live in strong family groups, known as mobs.When a
kangaroo is born it's completely helpless and totally blind only the size of a
small grub.
The little 'grub-like
creature' crawls through its mother's fur and into her pouch and attaches
itself to her teat to suckle. The baby is known as a Joey and
it lives in its mom's pouch for around one year, then spends
the following year staying very close to its mom at all
times, giving the joey two years with it mom.
During the first
year inside the pouch, after a number of months, the joey starts
spending a few minutes outside its mom's pouch. Seeing a baby
joey having its first look at the world and testing its long legs and tail
for the first time is very special indeed.
In the joey's first
steps into the world, it hasn't yet worked out how to use its long legs to hop
and its long tail to spring off, into the hop. Once joeys work it out, they spring
up and down almost on the spot, in sheer exuberance. But
after one or two minutes of jumping up and down like a spring, the joey will
scramble straight back into the safety of mom's pouch.
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| Roos basking in the sun |
At the end of the
first year when the joey is ready to move out of its mom's pouch, it is a big
kangaroo. It's actually astounding that it can even fit in a pouch or
that the mom is able to hop with such a heavy and cumbersome load onboard.
At this point the
young kangaroo is able to stay out of the pouch and become part of the 'teenage'
group who like to practice boxing each other and other fun things, but the joey
will still stay next to his mom for another year, until he completes two
years with her. And he'll always be part of a mob.
@PepiSmartDog and
Michele Brown
Thanks for sharing this story with us, Michele, and thank you for hosting the Thankful Thursday blog. I'm meeting a lot of fun pals and hope to meet many more. I learned a lot about roos and baby joeys and I love the pictures. Your description of the joey trying to figure out how to hop got me thinking about a children's book I had the opportunity to edit a few months ago: Baby Groundhog's First Day Out. I'd love to read a book about a joey and I know just the person to write it *hint hint*.
Late breaking news! We have a new calf! So I am thankful for her too. We named her Violet.
This is a blog hop, so make sure to follow the other links on the blog for fun stories and pictures. And join yourself. The hop runs all week, not just on Thursday.
That was so interesting and I really had no idea she was involved in kangaroo rescue until I saw it mentioned this morning.
ReplyDeleteI found it fascinating. She is such an interesting lady who has done so many awesome things for animals of all types. Thanks for stopping by.
ReplyDeleteThat's neat about the kangaroos. It must be fun to watch this, as we assume she has seen firsthand what she described.
ReplyDeleteBaby animals are always so cute. So is Violet. :)
Yes, I know Michele watches the roos first hand! I would get no work done at all. Thanks. We think Violet is cute too.
ReplyDeletePepiSmartDog: Violet is gorgeous! Love her name too. Incase people are wondering, yes I do see these things first hand and I've hand reared baby Joeys too; they have to be bottle fed every 4 hours AROUND THE CLOCK FOR ONE YEAR! LOL!
ReplyDeleteSorry I'm late with my comment this week. *blushes* Thanks for supporting Thankful Thursday Weekly Blog Hop. Hope to see you again. *waves* :=o)