Where is kangaroo found

Kangaroos can leap some 30 feet 9 meters in a single bound. Common Name: Red Kangaroo. Scientific Name: Macropus rufus. Type: Mammals. Diet: Herbivore. Group Name: Mob. Size: Head and body: 3. Weight: pounds. Explore more! Amazing animals videos Watch to discover interesting facts about animals from all over the world. Kangaroos are a special breed of animals.

They are popular for having pouches in their bellies where they carry their young ones until they can fend for themselves. Their young ones are called joeys. Secondly, the kangaroos are unique in that their movements are characterized by hopping. In addition, kangaroos are herbivorous and chew cud.

That means that they regurgitate their food, and re-chew it before the food is finally digested and absorbed. About 60 species of kangaroos exist. However, there are four main species: the antilopine kangaroo, the western gray kangaroo, the red kangaroo, and the eastern gray kangaroo.

All these types of kangaroo belong to the genus Macropus. A large percentage of kangaroos have their habitat in Australia. However, a few of them inhabit other parts of the world. Although most kangaroos have their habitat in Australia, the origin of kangaroos was in South America. At the time all continents were part of the super continent known as Gondwanaland. They eat grasses, flowers, leaves, ferns, moss and even insects. Like cows, kangaroos regurgitate their food and re-chew it before it is ready to be totally digested.

Probably the best-known fact about kangaroos is that they carry their young in a pouch. A female kangaroo is pregnant for 21 to 38 days, and she can give birth to up to four offspring at one time, though this is unusual. At birth, the baby, called a joey, can be as small as a grain of rice, or as big as a bee, at 0.

When the joey is born, it is guided safely into the comfy pouch, where it gestates for another to days. Inside the pouch, the joey is protected and can feed by nursing from its mother's nipples. Joeys urinate and defecate in the mother's pouch. The lining of the pouch absorbs some of the mess, but occasionally the mother will need to clean it out, which she does by inserting her long snout into the pouch and using her tongue to remove the contents.

A young joey will remain attached to a nipple while the mother does this, but any older ones will be temporarily kicked out. Another interesting fact about the mother kangaroo is that she is able to suckle two joeys at different developmental stages at the same time with milk that has different nutritional content, the New York Times has reported.

Joeys grow quickly, though, and at 14 to 20 months for females or 2 to 4 years for males, they will be fully matured. There is a rich fossil record for kangaroo ancestors and ancient relatives; giant kangaroos plodded through the Pleistocene 2.

And about 20 million years ago, tiny ancestors of modern kangaroos and a related group of kangaroos with fangs scurried through dense forests in northwestern Queensland, Australia, a region that is now arid outback. In a study published in February , scientists described a new kangaroo genus , Cookeroo, and two new species: Cookeroo bulwidarri, dated to about 23 million years ago, and Cookeroo hortusensis, which lived between 18 million and 20 million years ago.

These ancient kangaroos' bodies probably measured about 17 to 20 inches 42 to 52 centimeters long. According to the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species, 16 species of tree-kangaroos and rat-kangaroos are listed as either near threatened, threatened, vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered.