kangaroo episode

The podcast episode is about kangaroos. The host discusses their experience seeing kangaroos in Australia and mentions that there are around 60 species of kangaroos. Kangaroos are native to Australia and are also found in New Guinea. They are marsupials and the largest marsupial species. The red kangaroo is the largest type of kangaroo. Male kangaroos are larger than females and they have a chamber stomach. Kangaroos are social animals and live around 8 years in the wild and up to 25 years in captivity. They eat grass, leaves, ferns, flowers, fruit, and sometimes moths. Kangaroos can swim and are part of a group called a mob or a troop. Female kangaroos can pause their pregnancy until the joey leaves the pouch. Wallabies are smaller than kangaroos and are found in areas with trees and bushes. They have brighter coats and can be found in Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Hello everyone and welcome to Wildlife Wonders Podcast. Technically this is the second episode but the first episode we're going to talk specifically about a species. So today we are going to talk about kangaroos because it was voted because kangaroos are pretty cool because your host has been to Australia and I'm excited. I'm really excited. I hope you're excited. So one, let's first before I even go into the details of kangaroos I went to Australia in 2015. At that time kangaroos were overpopulated in Australia. Since then there has been a huge fire if you didn't hear about it way back when um a couple years ago but a lot of of the wildlife was killed in this forest fire that spread all over Australia. So I am not 100 sure if they're overpopulated now but at the time that I went they were overpopulated. They were everywhere. You can see them everywhere so yeah I thought that was pretty cool. So I got to see some different animals there but one of the main animals I saw was kangaroos. So here we are to talk about them. So kangaroos they are native to Australia like I said. I went to Australia that's where they were but you can also find kangaroos in New Guinea. They are part of the family macropods which means large foot. Specifically this refers to the red kangaroos but we'll get into the different types of kangaroos. So if you didn't already know kangaroos are vertebrates. They have a bat bone. They are mammals. They have fur and they are also something called marsupials. All right what the heck is a marsupial? Well let me tell you marsupials are animals that have pouches and they have their baby developed in the pouch. They have their baby in the pouch and when the baby is mature enough they come out of the pouch. In this case a baby a kangaroo a baby kangaroo is called a joey but kangaroos are marsupials. That's what marsupials there's also koalas and Tasmanian devils and wombats are also marsupials. They are all part of that family but the kangaroo is the largest marsupial. Specifically there are different types of kangaroos but the largest kangaroo the largest type of kangaroo is the red kangaroo. So you can go tell a fat lae. I bet you don't know what the largest marsupial kangaroo. You gonna land it to death. So there are um there's sexual dimorphism which means there's a difference between the sexes of this species. So the males are typically almost always larger. They can stand up to 5 feet 10 inches. So about the size of a height of an average male and they can weigh up to 198 pounds. Do you think you could go toe to toe with a kangaroo because personally I don't think I would win. I'll get my butt kicked but would I try probably not. They are fast. They are um very fast. They have two legs of course but they also have their tail which they use as a fifth limb. It is strong. They can balance on it helps them with balance anyway but they can balance on their tails. And then you have there's the females and the males. So you have the males which are sometimes referred to as bucks or jacks and your females are called your doe or your jill. So you got your jack and your jill like the um nursery rhyme real cute. Like I said their tails are for balance an extra and it's an extra limb. They are highly social animals. You usually will see them traveling or being they might travel or being around another group of kangaroos. They like to be with each other. They like to tough it out meet up on the block but either way and lifespan. Let's talk about the lifespan. So this can vary of course climate change, what's going on in the world, where they at, the different types of kangaroos. It really depends on all of those factors but on average they can live eight years in the wild and 25 years in captivity. Captivity meaning a healthy environment that allows them to grow. At the end of the captivity most most of the time thinking right now about zoos but sanctuaries stuff like that they can live up to 25 years. And I don't think I mentioned so I'm gonna go back and mention there are so many different kangaroos. There are like 60 I think around 60 species of kangaroos. Some are extinct. Extinct means they're dead. They're no longer coming back like dinosaurs but either way some are extinct. Some are not but the one that most people will probably see are the red kangaroos. These are your largest kangaroos but you also have your gray kangaroos, your western gray kangaroos, your eastern gray kangaroos, the south now I'm just joking there's no south kangaroo but still you have the antelope do not judge me if I pronounce that wrong but it's still a-n-t-o-l-o-p-i-n-e. There are tree kangaroos and so many others. If you want to go and learn about each species for the most part I realized I didn't even check how am I gonna go and just go on about the and I didn't tell y'all what they eat. So you'll mostly find kangaroos specifically the bigger kangaroos and areas that are open plains treeless versus their cousins the wallaby but nonetheless you'll find that they'll eat grass, they'll eat leaves, they'll eat ferns, they eat flowers, they eat fruit and sometimes moths. Funny thing they have a chamber stomach so they I'm gonna say it like this they like chew their food twice so they like chew it go down coming up up yeah chew it again and then swallow it back down to be processed through their body so that's pretty cool if you didn't know that now you do. Other animals that have chamber stomachs are like cows sheep and some other ones that I'm not going to name right now because I don't have them all memorized I'll tell you later but there are other animals with chamber stomachs as well we'll get to that at another episode I'm sure but moving on so some fun facts about kangaroos that I bet you didn't know and if you did know act like you didn't okay it's fine so the first fun fact they are amazing swimmers yeah you like looking like how can they swim with little arms like how is that possible but look they do their doggy paddle you done a little doggy paddle where you like kick the front and like move the back either way they do like a doggy paddle kind of form for kangaroos uh they usually swim to get across rivers of course to get enough get to another area but they also can swim to get away from predators so that's one cool fact another cool fact is that if you see a group of kangaroos sometimes they're called a mob or a troop so you mean like there comes the troops there comes the mob however you want to call it um I think it's pretty cool nickname animals I feel like whenever you name like the gender and like the gender of each animal or like a group of animals it's always really cool names like whatever group of kangaroos called just human like we don't have anything cool when you see a group of a posse I guess but whatever moving on another cool fact about kangaroos which I didn't know till I researched and this is awesome they have females have something called embryonic diapause and it basically means females can pause their pregnancy whenever they're ready or when their joey which is a baby kangaroo called joey or when the joey leaves the pouch so they can pause okay they can pause their pregnancy until the one they got in there leaves or boots the nest and they're like okay I'm ready for another one I thought that was pretty doggone cool like what if females if we can say yeah I just don't want to be pregnant right now let me put a pause on that that'll be pretty that'll be pretty dope like like we can just they can choose to when they're going to have their baby I thought that was so cool that just blew my mind so that is all about the kangaroos now since we have a little time and I know a lot of people get the kangaroos and wallabies confused so I am briefly and briefly I say going to go over the difference between kangaroos and wallabies now while they're all part of this family of macropods um and there's one more group I'm missing I can't remember off the top of my head right now but they're all in one umbrella family together but wallabies if you've ever seen a wallaby or heard of a wallaby wallabies are a lot smaller than kangaroos they're like I like to call them baby kangaroos they're a lot smaller they have smaller compact legs they're usually in areas filled with trees and bushes so on average they don't get any more any bigger than 45 pounds so the size of a small child and then they're no taller than 3.2 feet again the size of a child of a small child so they're like little mini kangaroos hopping around just like kangaroos they can't swim um they can also crawl which is pretty cool they're also they can also hop of course they still have their tails they still have pouches because they are also marsupials yeah we learned that word today didn't we so they are also marsupials they can also do a lot of same stuff that the kangaroos can do but like I said they are a lot lot lot smaller also they have brighter coats usually with kangaroos they're pretty solid one color they might have a variation of one color or two colors but for the most part they're pretty for the most part kangaroos are their coats or their furs is usually one solid color now for wallabies is usually a variation of two to three colors they just look a lot brighter I guess they want to be more known hey I'm here we the wallabies or whatever so that's your wallabies uh another thing about wallabies unlike your kangaroos for the most part since they predominantly that stay around the trees they mostly just eat grass and leaves and maybe some fruit here and there so yeah they don't get too fancy on their diet I guess you could say they're vegetarians and sorry another thing about they also are in Australia and New Guinea but now you can find wallabies in New Zealand Hawaii and sometimes even the UK which I thought was pretty pretty cool they're kind of starting to spread all around I mean you can find kangaroos here but that's not naturally they're not naturally in the U.S. um so yeah I digress two cool facts about wallabies I did not know the first one they have personal groomers and no they don't get paid but because wallabies stay in the trees and around the bushes they get a lot of ticks the ticks fall off gets on their coat annoys them they have to flick it off when they can um but kind of on the plus side of that crows love the ticks so every now and then crows will swoop down and pick the ticks off the wallaby so they're like getting it's like getting a trim or a personal wash every day without asking for it and they don't have to pay for it now yes the crows may annoy them but hey everybody gotta eat also on top of that just like kangaroos another cool fact about their I guess their pregnancy wallabies can be pregnant their whole their whole life family friendly guys their whole life um that sounds terrible it sounds terrible to me I mean everybody tit for tat you might have your own feelings about that but it's because wallabies have two uteri they have two of them we have one they have two you have two uteri but also they have three female parts they have three female parts you know what I'm saying so they have three of those and two uteri so they can conceive before they're even able to deliver and they can conceive or prepare conceive prepare to have their own child another child even while the first one hasn't been delivered yet so I think it's cool don't get me wrong it's real cool something I would want uh probably not but it's pretty dope I do have to say that it's something I can't do so hey they got one up on me either way that is all the facts I have for you today about your kangaroos and your wallabies um fun fact I guess when I went to Australia there was a sanctuary or some kind of reserve and there was wallabies around kangaroos around and we had these I had an ice cream cone and I was like oh how cute there's a wallaby that walked up to me next thing you know I like leaned down and like you know look at that wasn't getting too close but look close enough it came up to me it snatched my cone and it ran off or hopped off I guess in that sense so me and that wallaby got beefed to this day but yeah they're pretty cool up close just like any animal any animal with teeth can bite you but uh for the most part kangaroos are very curious they don't want they don't want any spoke as I like to say they don't want any trouble if any just like any animal sometimes if they feel threatened then there's more of a list there if you're messing with them but for the most part kangaroos can be peaceful just like any animal they can't fight they can bite but don't let you don't let that stop you from learning about them okay that's all I have to say stay tuned next Friday yeah next Friday you know come on up next Friday we'll be dropping the next episode the next species stay tuned and I will release probably on my social media what the next animal will be about thank you for joining today thank you for taking the time to listen to little old me I hope you learned something and you can find me at wildlife wonders podcast that is wildlife wonders with an s podcast on Instagram please reach out and let me know what you liked about this episode what you learned what you didn't learn or anything just cool comments you have to say I love hearing from you guys and we will see you next week thank you bye