Kangaroo

‘Een Dier als een Haes, met groote lepels’ (an Animal like a Hare, with long ears) was how Dutch explorers described the kangaroo. They are the grazers of the Australian plains, like the antelopes in Africa. But their physical build and movement are very different. By hopping on two legs, the kangaroo achieves great speeds. We can see from the skeleton how the body is designed to jump. It doesn’t need to escape predators: Australia doesn’t have any large predators.

Kangaroos are marsupials. The females have a large fold of skin on their belly: the pouch. They carry their young, also known as a ‘Joey’, in the pouch. When the young kangaroo is eleven months old, it has to stand on its own feet.