Kangaroo attacks on tourists prompt warnings to stop feeding them junk food

Wild animals lash out at visitors to NSW hospital site after being fed inappropriate food such as carrots, chips and even McDonald’s

Guardian staff

Wed 2 May 2018 04.46 BSTFirst published on Wed 2 May 2018 04.22 BST

A state MP has called for a coordinated government response to a spate of junk food-crazed kangaroo attacks on tourists on the New South Wales central coast.

The attacks have occurred while tourists attempt to feed the native animals inappropriate food such as carrots and corn chips, and even McDonald’s takeaway, tourist operators in the area say.

“There have been a number of reported incidents in which kangaroos have attacked visitors, in one case causing a very deep gash to a man’s stomach,” the local MP, Greg Piper, told NSW parliament on Tuesday.

Read on 

Driver 'deliberately' mows down 17 kangaroos in Australia

The RSPCA has appealed for help in finding a driver who deliberately ran down seventeen kangaroos along a 330-foot stretch of road in Brisbane

By Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney

11:34AM GMT 01 Feb 2016

Authorities in Australia are searching for a driver who ran down and killed 17 kangaroos along a stretch of road where the creatures are known to feed at night.

The carcasses were found along a 330-foot stretch of road on the outskirts of Brisbane. Sixteen were dead but one was still alive and had to be killed.

"You can quite clearly see the tyre tracks where they've gone off the road to hit them"

"They've definitely been deliberately run over,” said Michael Beatty, a spokesman for the RSPCA. “You can quite clearly see the tyre tracks where they've gone off the road to hit them."

The RSPCA, which has the power to investigate and to initiate prosecutions, is investigating the slaughter and is appealing for any witnesses to come forward.

“You can clearly see the tyre marks where the person has driven from the left side of the road to the embankment on the road and killed five or six [kangaroos] and then done the same thing 30 yards later.”

The area is known for its large kangaroo population – estimated at about 3,000. At night, the kangaroos tend to feed on the rich grass along the sides of the road, which connects a men’s and women’s prison.

Continued ...

Faster digestion in kangaroos reduces methane emissions

Date:  November 5, 2015

Source:  University of Zurich

Animals produce methane during the digestion process -- some more than others. Currently, around 20 percent of the world's methane emissions stem from ruminants. If this gas is released into the atmosphere, it aggravates the greenhouse effect and aids global warming. Previous studies revealed that ruminants, which include cows and sheep, release more methane into the environment than kangaroos, for instance -- even though the latter also possess a foregut, where bacteria break down the plant fibers and produce methane (much like in a cow's rumen). Exactly why kangaroos produce less methane, however, remained a mystery. The belief was that a different intestinal flora composition to a cow's was responsible.

Researchers from the University of Zurich, ETH Zurich and the University of Wollongong in Australia have now studied the previous assumptions from a different angle. The team measured how much methane kangaroos emit per food intake. "If you consider the absolute volume of methane per body size, kangaroos produce about as much as horses or ostriches -- i.e. significantly less than cows," explains Marcus Clauss from the University of Zurich. "If the gas production is correlated with the amount of food ingested, however, the amount of methane is higher and therefore closer to the ruminants again. In other words, the digestion process itself in kangaroos is not all that different to a cow's."

Read on …

Creepy Kangaroos: Why They Stand So Still

by Elizabeth Goldbaum, Staff Writer | August 27, 2015 08:35am ET

A field of grey, motionless kangaroos staring down a bicyclist in a recent YouTube video is not evidence of marsupial zombies, scientists say — though the pouched Australians look eerily possessed.

The upright kangaroos peer intensely at Ben Vezina, who posted the video on YouTube on Aug. 23, as he approaches them on bike in Hawkstowe Park in Melbourne. When he gets close, the stoic-looking animals bounce away.

Although the zombielike kangaroos look ready to devour Vezina, their behavior is much more benign and typical. "It looks really normal," said Marian Powers, a zookeeper at Fort Wayne Children's Zoo in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

"Kangaroos are really curious and inquisitive animals," and are very aware of anything that is odd to them, Powers told Live Science. The kangaroos in the video were likely interrupted from their grazing when Vezina suddenly appeared, Powers added. 

Continued ...

Changing environment caused some isolated kangaroos to evolve separately

July 22, 2015 by Bob Yirka report

A team of researchers with the University of Queensland in Australia has found that a group of kangaroos living along the Sunshine Coast in that country have some distinct genetic variations—they are not a separate species from the other kangaroos (they are still close enough that they can interbreed when given the chance) but instead have genes that show they evolved separately from others in other parts of the country. In their paper published in PLOS ONE, the team describes the genetic studies they undertook and their hopes that additional study of the unique kangaroos will offer some insights into how such animals adapted to a changing environment.

Read more at:

Lefties are all right with kangaroos

Date: June 18, 2015

Source: Cell Press

Summary: Kangaroos prefer to use one of their hands over the other for everyday tasks in much the same way that humans do, with one notable difference: generally speaking, kangaroos are lefties. The finding is the first to consider handedness in wild kangaroos, and challenges the notion that 'true' handedness among mammals is a feature unique to primates.

"According to a special-assessment scale of handedness adopted for primates, kangaroos pulled down the highest grades," says Yegor Malashichev of Saint Petersburg State University in Russia. "We observed a remarkable consistency in responses across bipedal species in that they all prefer to use the left, not the right, hand."

Read more ...

Kangaroos abound but fears abound for smaller cousins, warns WWF

Sydney (AFP) - Australia's big kangaroos are thriving, but wildlife campaigners hold fears for their smaller cousins, including the little-known bettong and the rock wallaby, WWF Australia has warned.

"The kangaroo is probably the most recognisable Australian animal of all," WWF-Australia spokesperson Darren Grover told AFP ahead of national threatened species day on Sunday.

"But part of that larger kangaroo and wallaby family are all these almost unknown little animals; the bettongs and potoroos and rock wallabies that people haven't necessarily heard of.

"Many of them are really struggling."

Grover said the overwhelming risk to these smaller marsupials were feral cats and introduced foxes, along with a loss of shelter due to habitat loss and changed fire practices.

Continued ...

Kangaroos win when aborigines hunt with fire: Co-evolution benefits Australia's martu people and wildlife

Date:

August 4, 2014

Source:

University of Utah

Summary:

Australia’s Martu people hunt kangaroos and set small fires to catch lizards, as they have for at least 2,000 years. A researcher found such human-made disruption boosts kangaroo populations – showing how co-evolution helped marsupials and made Aborigines into unintentional conservationists.

Read more ...

Five-legged kangaroo? Telling the tale of a kangaroo's tail

Date:

July 1, 2014

Source:

University of Colorado at Boulder

Summary:

Kangaroos may be nature's best hoppers. But when they are grazing on all fours, which is most of the time, their tail becomes a powerful fifth leg, says a new study. It turns out that kangaroo tails provide as much propulsive force as their front and hind legs combined as they eat their way across the landscape.

Continued

Hopping mad over roos

COLIN BETTLES

09 Mar, 2014 01:00 AM

QUEENSLAND Nationals Senator Ron Boswell has returned fire at comments from Greens rival Lee Rhiannon, in defence of kangaroo harvesting in Australia and its sustainability as a red meat industry.

In a Senate speech on February 12, Senator Rhiannon said two popular myths – that there’s a “super abundance” of kangaroos and the iconic animals are pests – were “so firmly entrenched in the Australian psyche that we do not think to question the science behind shooting kangaroos”.

“These myths are carefully nurtured by the industry via a well-honed communications strategy that has embedded itself into an unquestioning political framework that lobbies overseas politicians, the media, the market and the consumer,” she said.

“Scientific concerns are diminished by industry's advice to government as the work of activists and evidence of the cruelty to and suffering of regularly miss-shot kangaroos is labelled as 'extreme'.

“Meanwhile, the industry commissions its own work to produce explicitly industry-biased materials which are then presented as independent research to overseas governments and an unsuspecting Australian public.”

Read on

Young Australian describes vicious attack by two kangaroos

A 13-year-old girl suffered a vicious 25-minute attack by two kangaroos while out jogging in the bush in Australia.

Jade Bassett was left bleeding with deep scratches down her legs as well as injuries to her face and arm after confronting the two eastern grey kangaroos in bushland in Oakhampton in the Hunter region of New South Wales.

Her grandfather, Kevin Henderson, had taken her to the track and sat down on a bench to wait for her to return from a 15-minute run.

Bassett had only jogged about 10 metres when she spotted kangaroos, two of which she said were "really big" and one slightly smaller, though still bigger than her.

Read more

Animal accomplices spring roo from zoo

A kangaroo has escaped from a German zoo - with help from his accomplices, a fox and a wild boar.

Three kangaroos, Skippy, Jack and Mick, originally got out of their enclosure after a helpful fox dug a hole next to the fence.

Two of the three were then able to escape the park entirely through another hole dug by a wild boar under the exterior boundary, reports the Guardian.

Michael Hoffmann, deputy head of the animal park near Frankfurt, said vets had managed to snare one of the pair after a long chase.

There had been several sightings of the kangaroo still at large but he had managed to stay one hop ahead of authorities.

"We've got two of them back; now we're just looking for the third. He's super friendly, super nice. Absolutely no danger at all," said Mr Hoffman.

 http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Animal_accomplices_spring_roo_from_zoo

Kangaroo chased down by eagles

A South Australian man has filmed three wedge-tailed eagles chasing down a kangaroo in an extremely rare attack.

The video, filmed last week at Mokota Conservation Park, shows the roo standing on its hind legs and raising its paws in the air as if ready to box the birds of prey.

The eagles swoop several times on the kangaroo as it attempts to hop out of their lines of attack in the park's open tussock grasslands.

Norm Boege was working at the park when he spotted the hovering eagles and pulled his camera out.

"There were some kangaroos that had been hopping around the place for a while and there were a group of about to eight to 10 eagles," Mr Boege said.

The Wirrabara resident said it was clear the eagles "wouldn't have had a chance" at taking down the kangaroo, despite their persistence.

"It would have been way too big for them, it would have been at least a five-footer [150cm]," he said.

Tassin Barnard, the general manager at the Australian Wildlife Walkabout Park, told ninemsn she had heard of such attacks on kangaroos but they were extremely rare.

"Normally in that type of situation when birds attack kangaroos, it is because they are feeling threatened or they have babies nearby," Ms Barnard said.

"What is almost certainly happening is that the birds are defending, or believe their babies are under attack."

It is unlikely the kangaroos were looking for the nest of the eagles but probably chanced upon it when foraging for food nearby, she added.

Kangaroos are not easily deterred and will fight back by boxing, kicking and biting their opponents.

"All animals have such a strong instinct to protect their babies," Ms Barnard said.

video at:  http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8445533/kangaroo-chased-down-by-eagles-in-south-australia

Twin kangaroos

Salt and Pepper, a pair of newborn non identical twin kangaroos born in Australia, are being cared for by a zoo. According to a zoologist, the twin joeys were a "one in a million" birth. He said: "It's rare enough that twin joeys are born, and to have one of those an albino is very uncommon".