Kangaroo: Portrait of an Extraordinary Marsupial

Dr Stephen Jackson has worked in the wildlife industry for the past two decades, as a field biologist, wildlife consultant, zoo keeper, wildlife park curator and government regulator, among other roles. He has a PhD in zoology and has worked extensively with macropods in captivity, giving him a unique insight into their biology and behaviour. Dr Jackson is the author of Koala: Origins of an Icon, Biology of Australian Possums and Gliders and Australian Mammals: Biology and Captive Management, for which he received the prestigious Whitley Medal, and has published numerous papers on various areas of Australian mammalogy.

Dr Karl Vernes has been studying the ecology of Australia’s native mammals for more than 20 years. He first worked on kangaroos as a Masters student in north Queensland where he examined the Red-legged Pademelon in tropical rainforest before undertaking a PhD on the endangered Northern Bettong. Since 2003 Dr Vernes has lectured in conservation biology and wildlife ecology at the University of New England in New South Wales, where he has studied various macropods and worked on other kangaroos from as far afield as Tasmania and Papua New Guinea. Dr Vernes has published more than 40 scientific papers and book chapters.

First published in 2010

Copyright © Stephen Jackson and Karl Vernes 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

Email: info@allenandunwin.com

Web: www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

from the National Library of Australia

www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74175 903 7

Set in 11/14.5 pt Garamond 3 by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To our own little ‘joeys’: Olivia, James and Theo;

and ‘young at foot’ Emma and Cole

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Fangaroo to Kangaroo: The Evolution of Macropods

2. Dreamtime: Indigenous Peoples and the Kangaroo

3. Civet-Cats, Giant Rats and Jumping Raccoons: Early European Observations

4. Suspended Animation: Kangaroo Reproduction

5. Boxing Kangaroo: Macropod Behaviour

6. Truffles, Fruit, Leaves and Grass: Kangaroo Diet

7. High Jumpers: Locomotion in the Kangaroo

8. Kangaroo Commodity: Hunting a National Icon

9. Flying Kangaroos: Ethnotramps and Public Fascination

10. Extinct? The Disappearance of Australia’s Macropods

11. Kangaroo Conservation: Saving Australia’s Macropods

Conclusion

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Endnotes

Citations for Illustrations and Tables

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to the experts who have added considerably to this book by reviewing sections or chapters, including John Bradley (Monash University), Hilary Carey (University of Newcastle), Andrew Claridge (NSW Department of Environment, Water and Climate Change), Danielle Clode (University of Melbourne), Jacqui Coughlan, Graeme Coulson (University of Melbourne), Chris Dickman (University of Sydney), Gordon Grigg (University of Queensland), Thomas Heinsohn (University of Canberra), Kris Helgen (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC), Cathy Herbert (University of Sydney), Chris Johnson (James Cook University), Ben Kear (La Trobe University), Athol Klieve (Queensland Primary Industries and Fisheries), John McDonald, Tony Pople (Biosecurity Queensland), Euan Ritchie (Deakin University), Tanya Vernes (World Wide Fund for Nature) and George Wilson (Australian Wildlife Services). Isabelle Devos read and commented on the penultimate draft of this book, and made several excellent recommendations for improvement, for which we are also grateful.

Many other researchers and experts have been generous with their time and assistance. Andrew Woolnough, Steve Van Dyck and David Alonso Love, along with the Australian Museum and its staff, including Anina Hainsworth, Fiona Simpson, Fran Smith and Leone Lemmer, were a great help with obtaining various references. Thanks also to Francine Gilbert (la Bergerie Nationale de Rambouillet, France), Bruno Munilla (Centre d’Etude de Rambouillet et de sa Forêt, France), Derek Yalden (University of Manchester, UK), and Philippe Devos (Deputy Foreign Editor, Globe and Mail, Canada) who provided information about expatriate wallabies in Europe and North America. Enormous thanks go to Professor Iain Young, Head of the School of Environmental and Rural Science at the University of New England, who generously provided the funds we needed to purchase many of the wonderful images seen throughout the book. Other images were made freely available to us—thank you to all of the people and organisations who so quickly and generously responded to our requests for material, especially Gerhard Körtner and James Turner who provided most of the stunning colour photos of macropods. Isabelle Devos did the beautiful sketches that open each chapter.

Finally, sincere thanks go to our partners, Kerstin and Isabelle, for their enduring support and patience during this project.

INTRODUCTION

Picture a large Red Kangaroo lying under the shade of a tree on a hot day, its head up and its ears swivelling like antennae, tuned for the slightest sound of danger. The alarm given, the animal bounds into action, its muscular body and unique, spring-like hind-legs allowing it to leap effortlessly over the red sands of central Australia. It’s an image of power, grace and efficiency.

The Red Kangaroo may be the archetypal image of ‘the kangaroo’ but there are, in fact, nearly 80 species of ‘kangaroo’ in Australia, New Guinea and their surrounding islands. Strictly speaking, only the largest of these magnificent hopping animals are, officially, ‘kangaroos’. Those that are medium-sized are known as wallabies, while the smaller species go by fascinating names like pademelon, narbalek, quokka, mala, boodie, woylie, potoroo and bettong—to name just a few. All of these animals are known as ‘macropods’ (literally meaning ‘big foot’), and we will use this term interchangeably with the generic ‘kangaroo’ throughout this book for all the kangaroos, wallabies, rat-kangaroos and their relatives.

Evolutionarily speaking, kangaroos are stamped ‘Made in Australia’. They evolved on that fragment of Gondwana we call Australia, and have adapted superbly to its range of habitat types, and its unpredictable and often fickle climate. Throughout Australia and New Guinea you will find kangaroos living in almost every habitat type—lush forest to the driest of deserts, alpine meadows to steep rocky gorges. The kangaroos’ unique and adaptable body form means they can be found living in underground burrows, scurrying about the rainforest floor, following well-worn paths through dense heath, scrambling up and down sheer cliff faces, and climbing into the dizzying heights of the rainforest canopy—and, of course, hopping across the vast open grassy plains, woodlands and deserts that dominate the Australian landscape. Their diet is varied too—grass, leaves, fruit, seeds, tubers, insects and even truffles are on the kan- garoos’ menu, and some of the extinct species might even have had a taste for flesh. In satisfying their dietary needs kangaroos fulfil many of the same roles played by mammals on other continents, such as grazing antelope and deer, seed-dispersing rodents and even leaf-eating monkeys. However, the large grazing kangaroos differ from other grazing animals in that they can digest plant material without producing methane gas—an evolutionary adaptation that, if harnessed, could quite literally help to save the planet.

What else makes this particular group of marsupials (pouched mammals) so interesting? For one thing, macropods have a remarkable reproductive biology—you won’t find anything like it even among other marsupials like possums and wombats. Although macropods have a pouch and a short gestation period, the resemblance to other marsupials stops there—macropods can produce young continually, produce young at three different stages of development and, incredibly, can deliberately stop the development of an embryo. Another defining characteristic of the macropods is their gait. Macropods are exquisite hoppers, their method of locomotion energy-efficient and surprisingly rapid—and probably the first thing that springs to mind when we think of a ‘kangaroo’. Why? Because it is such a strange thing for a large mammal to do.

Australia’s Indigenous people have lived with and hunted kangaroos for tens of thousands of years, and celebrate them in stories, ceremonies and art. When Europeans arrived in Australia, they too were intrigued by these strange mammals. The journals of the early seafarers, explorers and colonists tell of their fascination, and within a few years of the First Fleet leaving England, kangaroos had been brought back by returning ships and exhibited in London, and would later establish wild populations in England, mainland Europe, Hawaii and New Zealand. Modern preoccupation with macropods seems not to diminish with familiarity either—depictions of kangaroos appeared in art, official currency and the literature of Australia’s early European colonists, and continue to be used today by sporting teams, sports fans and advertisers as a symbol of all things Australian. Direct use—in the form of food—has also been a big part of the human experience of kangaroos for as long as people have lived alongside them.

Many smaller macropods have not been able to adapt to the arrival of Europeans in Australia and the release of foxes and cats—a string of extinctions tell that sorry tale. In contrast, a handful of species are not only widespread over vast areas of Australia but overabundant. The response by the agricultural community has been to actively hunt kangaroos to protect pastures, and today many hundreds of thousands of animals are harvested each year by official sanction for their skins and meat as part of successful and environmentally sustainable commercial enterprise.

In the coming chapters we explore these issues in detail—from the ancient origins of kangaroos to modern efforts to conserve and manage them. Along the way we chart the significance kangaroos have to Aboriginal peoples, the amazement that accompanied the first kangaroo sightings by Europeans—and later efforts to manage them—and the sustained fascination people have with kangaroos that leads these animals to be instantly recognised the world over. We also discuss the natural history of kangaroos—reproduction, behaviour, diet and, of course, that amazing hopping ability—all of which make kangaroos such extraordinary marsupials.

1

FANGAROO TO KANGAROO

The Evolution of Macropods

The Quadrupeds we saw but few and were able to catch few of those that we did see. The largest was call[e]d by the natives Kangooroo. It is different from any European and indeed any animal I have heard or read of except the Gerbua of Egypt, which is not larger than a rat when this is as large as a middling Lamb; the largest we shot weighed 84lb. It may however be easily known from all other animals by the singular property of running or rather hopping upon only its hinder legs carrying its fore bent close to the breast; in this manner however it hops so fast that in the rocky bad ground where it is commonly found it easily beat my greyhound, who tho he was fairly started at several killd only one and that quite a young one.1

In the vernacular, a ‘kangaroo’ is any one of the 77 species of hopping macropod marsupials of Australia and New Guinea. We know that several species have been confirmed as extinct since European settlement but the fossil record shows that Australia once proliferated in macropods—some the size of rabbits, others giants weighing several hundred kilograms. Many of these ancient species, and all of the largest ones, became extinct shortly after the Australasian region was settled by its indigenous peoples, more than 45,000 years ago, while many others survived until the arrival of the first European settlers.

There were 57 species of macropod known to have occurred in Australia and its islands at the time of European settlement, with a further 23 species found on New Guinea and its surrounding islands, three of which are shared with Australia (see Appendix 1). The 77 modern species of macropods encompass a wide variety of shapes and sizes and range from the diminutive Musky Rat-kangaroo of the Australian Wet Tropics that weighs just 500 grams to the massive Red Kangaroo of the arid centre that can weigh as much as 85 kilograms. The group includes species that burrow, others that climb trees, some that live among the steepest rocky gorges and others that inhabit the seemingly endless desert plains. They live in rainforest, woodland, heathland, grassland and desert—there is not a vegetation type in Australia or New Guinea where you will not find at least one species of macropod.

THE MACROPOD FAMILY TREE

Living macropods are so diverse that they are divided up into three families within the Superfamily Macropodoidea. The most primitive of the three is the strangely named Family Hypsiprymnodontidae. The family has only one living member, the Musky Rat-kangaroo, the smallest of all the macropods and generally considered to be a missing link between the possums and kangaroos. The Musky Rat-kangaroo is unique to the rainforests of North Queensland and retains some of its possum heritage by having five toes on its hind foot. Every other macropod species has four digits, because evolution has done away with the first digit, thus allowing the animals to hop more efficiently. The Musky Rat-kangaroo is the only macropod that does not hop—it appears to have separated from the other macropods before hopping evolved. It is also unique in that it has a simple stomach, and females can give birth to twins and even triplets while all other macropods typically produce only one young at a time.2

Distant relatives of the Musky Rat-kangaroo are the potoroos, bettongs and rat-kangaroos of the Family Potoroidae. These small macropods, generally referred to ‘potoroids’, all weigh less than 3 kilograms, and are represented by 11 species, of which three have become extinct since European settlement. Potoroids once occurred across the length and breadth of Australia—indeed, the Burrowing Bettong once had the greatest geographic range of all the macropods—but the family has no relatives within New Guinea. The potoroos live in the dense rainforest undergrowth of Australia’s east coast, and parts of the south-west, whereas the bettongs prefer drier conditions such as open forests and woodlands or scrublands covered in Spinifex and other grass tussocks of central Australia. As we shall see in Chapter 6, the potoroids are also unusual in that their diet is typically dominated by the underground fungi known as truffles.

Macropods present in Australia and New Guinea at the time of European settlement (see Appendix 1 for the full species list)

The third and by far the largest family, in both number and body size, is the Family Macropodidae, generally referred to as the macropodids. There are 65 species in this family, including the kangaroos, wallaroos, wallabies, rock-wallabies, nailtail wallabies, hare-wallabies, tree kangaroos, the quokka, pademelons and several species of New Guinea forest wallabies. Macropodids can be found throughout Australia and New Guinea—from the highest mountains to the most arid deserts. The most unusual macropodids are probably the tree kangaroos, which are amongst the family’s most recently evolved lineages, in evolutionary terms, but which have taken to the trees to return to an arboreal lifestyle like their early marsupial ancestors. To this end they have developed several unique features, including forelimbs that are of similar size to the hind limbs, short broad feet, and the ability to move the hind feet alternately, which other macropods only do if they are swimming.3 Intriguingly, one species of tree kangaroo, the Dingiso—a species from the Indonesian province of Papua (previously known as Irian Jaya) described in 1995 by Professor Tim Flannery—has come full circle and readapted to a terrestrial lifestyle. The Dingiso has a more slender skeleton and longer hind feet than other tree kangaroos and therefore appears to be a tree kangaroo in evolutionary reverse—making the transition back down from the trees to the ground.4

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Common names for many of the macropods such as ‘kangaroo’, ‘wallaroo’, ‘wallaby’, ‘pademelon’, ‘potoroo’ and ‘bettong’ seem to be derived from the multitude of indigenous Australian languages. The local inhabitants of a region would have had specific meanings for these words, in that they would have given each name to an individual species of macropod. The first European explorers and settlers later adopted these names to describe a range of species and even several genera.

The word ‘kangaroo’ is sometimes used as a generic term for all of the Superfamily Macropodoidea, but it is often reserved for the larger members such as the Eastern Grey Kangaroo, the Western Grey Kangaroo and the Red Kangaroo. There is some disagreement about both the origin of the word and its original meaning. When Lieutenant James Cook was delayed at Endeavour River in 1770 while his ship underwent repairs, he wrote in his journal on 14 July:

Mr Gore, who went out this day with his gun, had the good fortune to kill one of the animals which had been so much the subject of our speculation …. This animal is called by the natives Kanguroo.5

Captain Cook’s ‘Kanguroo’ is now assumed, after considerable debate, to have been the Eastern Grey Kangaroo (for more about Cook’s encounter with kangaroos, see Chapter 3). Regardless of the (sometimes heated) discussions about which species was being referred to, it seems certain that the local inhabitants used the word to describe a large macropod. Folklore suggests that, on seeing a large creature hopping around, Cook asked a native what it was called and was told ‘kanguroo’ meaning ‘I don’t know’, but this is almost certainly untrue. In the early 1970s, John Haviland’s investigation into the language of the area, Guuyu Yimidhirr, concluded that there was no evidence that the language had changed radically between 1770 and the present day. Modern Guuyu Yimidhirr retains the word gangurru for ‘kangaroo’.6 The myth perhaps stems from the records of Captain Phillip King, who in 1820 believed he had heard the word men-u-ah used as the name for the kangaroo.7 What King probably heard was minha, a Guuyu Yimidhirr word that literally means ‘meat’ or ‘edible animal’.

We are familiar with the term ‘wallaby’, but what is a wallaby? Wollabi is an Eora word, from the language spoken by the people of the Sydney region, and was their name for the Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby. The term was quickly adopted by the earliest settlers around Sydney, along with other Eora words such as walaru (wallaroo), budaru (potoroo) and betong (bettong). Eora also gives us the names for the wombat and the dingo. Today, ‘wallaby’ is often used loosely to describe the smaller macropodids of the Family Macropodidae, but there is no hard-and-fast rule as to when a kangaroo becomes a wallaby. A quick look over the various body weights suggests that, typically, wallabies weigh less than 20 kilograms and kangaroos weigh more than 20 kilograms, but apart from that there is no real difference between them. One could argue that the only true wallaby is the Swamp Wallaby, as it is the sole member of the genus Wallabia, though even this species has recently been proposed to be placed back in with the other wallabies and kangaroos in the genus Macropus. The Eora word for Swamp Wallaby is banggaray, which brings us no closer to a definition of wallaby! The name Pademelon, which today is given to small forest-dwelling wallabies of the genus Thylogale, is also an Eora word, being a transliteration of the word badimaliyan.8

CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE RISE OF THE MACROPODS

How and when did such a wide variety of macropods evolve? In order to understand this question, we need to first understand how Australia’s climate has changed over the last 35 million years. Continental plates have collided, merged and separated again several times during the Earth’s history. The super- continent Pangaea (‘the entire Earth’) began to break up about 250 million years ago, forming two smaller super-continents—Laurasia, which included much of present North America, Europe and Asia; and Gondwana, the major southern land mass. About 160 million years ago, Gondwana began to fragment into the present southern continents (and many smaller fragments), which have been drifting apart ever since. Australia and Antarctica were the last joined fragments of this super-continent. Their rift began about 45 million years ago, a separation which was complete by about 35 million years ago. Australia then began drifting northwards, finally colliding (perhaps 5 million years ago) with an arc of islands lying to the south of South-east Asia. These islands became part of what we now call New Guinea, at the leading northern edge of the Australian plate. Australia is continuing its northward drift towards Asia, causing the highlands of New Guinea to rise and slowly closing the distance between it and the Indonesian archipelago.9

The climate trigger for the evolution of the macropods appears to have occurred some 33–23 million years ago when a global cooling episode led to Australia’s warm and moist climate becoming progressively cooler and drier.10 This process was initiated by the opening up of the circumpolar current around Antarctica, which led to a dramatic change in the surrounding ocean currents and associated climate, and the development of ice over Antarctica. Before Gondwana fragmented, its northern tips reached up towards the Equator, but those at the south were still connected to Antarctica. That meant that ocean currents could move only between the Equator and higher latitudes, producing a mixing that kept all oceans at a similar, warm temperature.

Uniformly warm ocean surface temperatures create uniformly warm, wet climates, so prior to the separation of Australia and Antarctica the planet’s land masses were covered in forest adapted to the prevailing conditions. The opening up of a route for a circumpolar oceanic current effectively separated a pool of sub-Antarctic waters that rapidly cooled, from the warmer oceans that then circulated water from the tropics to temperate latitudes. This was the first stage in the ‘polarisation’ of the world’s climate: the poles became deeply cold, while the tropics became much warmer. The polarisation of the southern hemisphere’s climate, into a polar south, temperate mid-latitudes and a tropical equatorial zone intensified through the Miocene and into the Pliocene (24 million years ago to 2 million years ago) as Australia drifted further into the tropics. The overall effect on Australia’s climate was a gradual drying of the interior, leaving only the eastern and northern margins as wet as the whole continent had been at the start of the Miocene.11

It was this ‘drying out’ of Australia which led to the expansion and diversification of the sclerophyllous plants, with their leathery leaves which were better adapted to reducing water loss.12 The genus Eucalyptus became particularly common and widespread from about 120,000 years ago (but in many places only in the last 40,000–50,000 years).13 The increasing frequency of Eucalyptus, grass and forb (non-woody herbaceous plants other than grasses) pollens in lake-bed sediments is matched by a corresponding decrease in rainforest fossil remains and an increase in charcoal particle frequency, indicating a greater frequency or intensity of fires. It was this opening up of the forests and expansion of the grasslands and grassy woodlands which led to such a marked change in the terrestrial marsupial fauna, with the macropod component becoming more conspicuous, providing as it did an abundant supply of food for