The birth of the baby, an arboreal kangaroo, “is an amazing event in the Bronx Zoo and a unique opportunity for people to observe one of nature’s most amazing evolutionary adaptations,” US Zoo director Jim Breheny said in a new statement.
The tree kangaroo is native to Papua New Guinea and is classified as an endangered animal by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It is a tree-dwelling marsupial that lives in mountainous rainforests.
The family is much smaller than the famous Australian red kangaroo. The adult male Machi tree kangaroo weighs between 9 and 11 kilograms. Zoo officials said that the baby’s size at birth was the size of a human fingernail, and that the infant crawls towards its mother’s fur to enter her pouch and emerges about seven months later.
“At this stage of development, the baby will spend a lot of time in its mother’s pouch with only its head visible. As it grows, it will begin to explore its environment and spend short times outside the pouch.”
Conservationists and nature activists believe that fewer than 2,500 arboreal machi kangaroos still live in the wild. It is threatened due to habitat destruction, hunting and other human activities.
#size #human #fingernail #American #zoo #announces #birth #rare #kangaroo