Australia is known for having species of wild lives that can kill a person. The country or continent as we will call it is home to the Blue ringed octopus, Bull Sharks, Box Jellyfish, salt water crocodiles, funnel web spiders which contain neurotoxins, the taipan, and not forgetting the Kangaroo. If you do not know australia for anything else, know them for the Kangaroos.
Kangaroos are a large grass eating mammal that is fond of scratching, boxing, and leg punches, in their fight for dominance. Kangaroos along side wallabies, bettong, quokkas, and even rat kangaroos are all family of macropods, which is why they have big foots. These animals are descendants of marsupials and along side placental mammals, they from a common ancestor evolution changed how they birth newborn.
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Diversity thrives within the kangaroo kingdom, with a mesmerizing array of species boasting varying colors and physiques. The ranks include the Antilopine wallaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo, Western Grey Kangaroo, Red Kangaroo, Common Wallaroo, and Black Wallaroo. Unified by their distinctive marsupial pouches, these mothers carry their young for a brief one-month pregnancy before birth. Once born, the joeys find refuge within their mother's pouches, embarking on a transformative six-month journey of growth and nourishment.
Once they are out of the pouch, they begin to hop and learn to fight. When it comes to hoping, the red kangaroo is the fastest and largest of them all. They can hop at around 15km/hr but can sprint up to 70km/hr. The speed of kangaroos can be attributed to a number of adaptations such as a longer and bigger hind limbs compared to their fore limbs, and they use a bipedal form of movement.
The kangaroo's legs, composed of remarkable tendons with an innate capacity for stretch, serve as reservoirs of energy. This intricate adaptation allows kangaroos to maximize efficiency while hopping, preserving energy and reducing muscle strain. Akin to athletes, their muscles exhibit high capillary density and blood volume, enabling sustained endurance during intense physical activities
Kangaroos have a skeletal muscle that is about 50% of their entire body mass, with majority of the muscles being centered around their hindlimbs and pelvis. Their muscles have a high amount of mithochondria and capilary density and blood volumes. Compared to sprint hoping, when kangaroos perform pentapedal locomotion which is known as walking, they burn more energy since it also includes their tail.
Like I previously said, Kangaroos are herbivores but while they feed on grass, they aren't ruminants like other grass eating animals. Kangaroos digestive system is made up of two chambered stomach which are the sacciform forestomach and the tubiform forestomach, and they do not chew cud. Since kangaroos do not ruminate, they can eat a large amount of food at once and they can spend up to 10 hours daily feeding as food is an important source of energy but more importantly moisture because because they can go for day without water provided they still eat.
In ruminant animals, food is fermented in other to extract nutrients and hydrogen gas produced is converted to methane by bacteria which is released at a high amount but with kangaroos, the methane is reduced because the food move rapidly, and in kangaroo, bacteria turns food to acetic acid which aid muscle growth.
Let's discusss the pouch of a kangaroo which looks like a baby sling, something to just keep the baby hanging. Actually, the pouch of the kangaroo is completely different from a sling of a baby. Let me mention that the size of an adult kangaroo can be twice that of a man but like I mentioned earlier, newborns are extremely small, alongside blind, deaf, and hairless. The pouch is a pocket of skin that acts like a second womb for the newborn. The pouch possesses four nipples which produces milk to help the joey grow and gain germ fighting antibodies. Depending on the month of the child in the pouch, ingredients can change from time to time. When it is time to help the newborn grow fur, the milk becomes rich in sulfur.
REFERENCE.
- http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph240/cannistraro2/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4126630/
- https://courses.grainger.illinois.edu/me481/sp2021/Dawson1973.pdf
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6546327/
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00589/full
- https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/10/2/397
- https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/218/21/3425/14436/Decreasing-methane-yield-with-increasing-food
- https://www.iflscience.com/whats-inside-a-kangaroo-pouch-57856
- https://austhrutime.com/kangaroos_foregut_fermentation.htm