Pouch monitor February 9, 2018

From now on, monitoring the pouches of the grey kangaroos living near the Hill House is advisable. Specifically, the joey of one of the females has just started to have a look outside from the safety of the pouch. Fortunately, the vigilant carers have already been able to take a photo and so we are already able to share the first images of the joey.

Kangaroos, and marsupials in general, have a very short pregnancy and therefore newborns come into this world in a rather underdeveloped, nearly embryonic state. For marsupials, the development phase that usually takes place as embryonic development within the mother’s body therefore takes place outside the womb; in most cases in the pouch. Our baby kangaroo might have been born some time in the autumn last year, and carers could see from the increasingly bulging pouch that there must be a joey inside, but this was the first time that the baby could be seen.

During the upcoming months the baby will be looking out more and more frequently and in a couple of weeks it might even leave the pouch for the first time and take a few steps. Then the time spent out of the pouch will be longer and longer and by the end of the summer the joey will leave the mother’s pouch.

The western grey kangaroo (Macropus fuliginosus), also referred to as a black-faced kangaroo, are on the larger side of the more than seventy kangaroo species. Although the Zoo used to have a few specimens of this species already in the 19th century, the current stock of our western grey kangaroos can be traced back to the breeding stock that we received in the early 1980s from  Perth Zoo in Western Australia. The majority of our current animals, including the current joey on the mother’s side, is the descendant of the parent stock that arrived from Perth. Of course, fresh blood has been introduced over the years, and Hamlet, the current alpha male of the herd and the joey’s father, arrived in 2013 from Aalborg Zoo in Denmark.

In addition to the joey shown in the images, we expect another joey to pop up, because another female also carries a joey in her pouch. However, that joey has not reached the age for coming out of the pouch.

In nice weather, grey kangaroos can be seen in the enclosure on the shore of the Great Lake between the Hill House and the Vulture Aviary, and in cold weather inside the Hill House. When they are in the indoor enclosure, they can be watched through the viewing windows on the side of the wooden pathway leading through the Hill House.