Kangaroo

Kangaroos are the largest Marsupials alive today. They currently are native to the continent of Australia. There are four different sub-kinds in the kangaroo baramin: the Western Grey Kangaroo, the Eastern Grey Kangaroo, the Red Kangaroo, and the Antilopine Kangaroo.

Description

Kangaroos have large ears on top of their small heads, a long snout, and short arms with clawed fingers. Their legs are strong and powerful, good for leaping. Their feet have four toes at the end of elongated metatarsi that they rest on when standing. They also have a powerful, thick tail that is used as support when standing, a third-leg when walking slowly, and for counterbalance while leaping. Like all Marsupials, female kangaroos have a pouch on their stomachs in which they carry their young.

Diet

Kangaroos are herbivores, eating grass, roots, and shrubs. They have a chambered stomach similar to sheep and cattle. They are able to regurgitate their food, chew it again as cud, and then swallow it for digestion.

Social Order

Kangaroos travel in mobs of about ten or more males and females. The leader of the mob, called a "boomer", is a male determined by age and size. The boomer has access to females in his mob for mating and will wander around the mob intimidating any other males who try to mate with his harem.

Reproduction

Male kangaroos will go around the mob checking the females’ cloaca. Many times, males are rejected by the females because of size if they are small. In other cases, if a larger male is checking a female out, she may just move away. Sometimes, when a male is checking out a female, the female will urinate for the male, who will sniff the urine. Some studies show that this ritual is for the male to see if the female kangaroo is receptive to him or not.

If the female is responsive to the male, she raises her tail and the male will follow her. Sometimes the kangaroos will scratch each other’s tails or the male will give the female a back rub before mating. When the female is ready to mate she will arch her tail.

Female kangaroos usually only have one baby kangaroo (called a "joey") at a time. The newborn joey weigh as little as .03 ounces when first born, after which it crawls into its mothers pouch where it will nurse, grow, and develop. They spend a lot of time in their mothers pouch developing. The Red Kangaroo joey will stay in their mothers pouch for about eight months and Grey Kangaroo joeys stay in there for about a year.

Origins

The Creationist website states the following regarding the evolutionary view of the kangaroos origin:

The Macropod family is alleged to have evolved from either the Phalangeridae (possums) or Burramyidae (pygmy-possums)...

However, there are no fossils of animals which appear to be intermediate between possums and kangaroos. Wabularoo naughtoni, supposed ancestor of all the macropods, was clearly a kangaroo (it greatly resembles the potoroos which dwell in Victoria’s forests). If modern kangaroos really did come from it, all this shows is the same as we see happening today, namely that kangaroos come from kangaroos, ‘after their kind.’

The lack of transitional fossils showing that the kangaroo was the result of evolution is not surprising given that the fossil record does not not support the evolutionary position.

According to the origins theory model used by creation scientists, modern kangaroos, like all modern animals, originated in the Middle East and are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood. It has not yet been determined by baraminologists whether kangaroos form a holobaramin with the wallaby, tree-kangaroo, wallaroo, pademelon and quokka, or if all these species are in fact apobaraminic or polybaraminic.

Also according to creation science theories, after the Flood, kangaroos bred from the Ark passengers migrated to Australia. There is debate whether this migration happened over land -- as Australia was still for a time connected to Europe by a land bridge similar to the one that connected Asia to America -- or if they rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters. Another theory is that God simply generated kangaroos into existence there.

Other views on kangaroo origins include the belief of some Australian aborigines that kangaroos were sung into existence by their ancestors during the "Dreamtime" and the evolutionary view that kangaroos and the other marsupials evolved from a common marsupial ancestor which lived millions of years ago.

External Links

• How did animals get from the Ark to places such as Australia?