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10 Fun Facts About Kangaroos
Although they are not the only flagship animals of this country they call OZ, by an abbreviation that derives from pronouncing OZtralia (Australia), not from the book about the magician, kangaroos remain and will continue to be the nation's faunistic pride for their peculiarities and almost geographic exclusivity. They are mammals of the family Macropodidae, big feet, characterized by the development of the embryos of their species in a marsupial bag in the females of the species.
There goes a series of curiosities that you may not know about the marsupials that most sympathetically awaken down under:
1- Name: its origin is like many others, simple chance, or confusion according to legend. And it is that when the European colonizers and explorers asked the natives about the name of this strange jumping animal, they, under their tongue, responded with a kangaroo that means something like I'm not understanding you, but that gave a name to the kangaroos we know today.
2- There are about 47 species of kangaroo, which range from the size of a wallaby (approximately one kilogram) to the size of a red kangaroo (135 kilograms).
3- As marsupials, the offspring finish their development in an embryonic bag. In order to be able to access it, unlike the other species in which the main organs are formed first, the kangaroos first develop the limbs so that the embryos can still climb up to the marsupium where they will be suckled and where they will be able to complete the rest of their organs in a period of 180 and 300 days.
4- They are the only mammals that breathe through the skin! It happens when the lungs of the offspring are incomplete and their passage through the outside requires this technique.
5- Their characteristic jumps, aided by their strong and thick tails, make them the only large animal that moves by jumps. A kangaroo can jump at a speed of 60 km/h and can jump obstacles 3 meters high.
6- Their long feet make it difficult for these animals to backtrack. They cannot back up! Just as they cannot move slowly, they can move on all fours.
7- Recently, scientific studies showed that the tail of kangaroos, in addition to being a point of equilibrium, acts as a 5th member: "They do as much mechanical work with their tails as anyone does with their legs," said Maxwell Donelan of Simon Fraser University after a rigorous contemporary study of the largest marsupials on the planet.
8- Tasmania is the world's largest producer of legal opium poppies. Kangaroos eat these plants, which makes them drugged for a long time, and circle around or take the crops with them. Rumor has it that koalas also get intoxicated with the eucalyptus they eat, but this is a myth. It's because they're so lazy they look like they're high, but they're not.
9- They have the ability to turn their ears to hear even the lowest noise.
10- Kangaroo females are undoubtedly a very special animal: they can determine the gender of their offspring before they are born and communicate with them by clicking. In addition, in times of drought, like other animal and plant species, female kangaroos can stop the development of their offspring in their womb until conditions improve, giving them a better chance of survival. 100% intelligent adaptation to climatic conditions.
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