Author Koh Lin ◦
Sitting quitely, sitting still…
I sometimes see a kangaroo.
Maybe red, maybe brown…
I’ve also seen it in grey and white.
No matter the colour of the kangaroo…
These marsupials come in shades of a roo.
The word ‘kangaroo’ is derived from the Guugu Yimithirr word gangurru, that refer to the grey kangaroos. The name was first recorded as “Kangooroo or Kanguru” on 4 August 1770, by Lieutenant James Cook (later to be Captain James Cook) on the banks of the Endeavour River at the site of modern Cooktown, where the HM Bark Endeavour was beached for almost seven weeks to repair damage to the ship on the Great Barrier Reef. Guugu Yimithirr is the language of the people of the area.
There is a common myth about the English word “kangaroo”, it was thought to be a Guugu Yimithirr phrase for “I don’t understand you.”
Some kangaroo facts:
- A kangaroo is a marsupial, a mammal in the class Mammalia.
- Kangaroos are a macropod which means “big foot”.
- A large male kangaroo is called a “boomer”.
- A female kangaroo is called a “flyer”. They are also known as “doe” and “jill”.
- A baby kangaroo is called a “joey”.
- Groups of kangaroos are called “mobs”.
- There are over 40 different species of Kangaroo.
- The Red Kangaroo is the largest marsupial in the world.
- The largest of the species is the Red Kangaroo.
- The smaller species are usually called Wallabies.
- The Kangaroo and the Emu appear on the Australian coat of arms, being selected as symbols of Australia and to represent the country progress (because they are always moving forward and never move backwards).
Kangaroos are often depicted in Aboriginal artwork, sometimes in abstract form, or as footprints and in landscape paintings.
- Scientific classification
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Chordata
- Subphylum: Vertebrata
- Class: Mammalia
- Subclass: Marsupialia
- Order: Diprotodontia
- Suborder: Phalangerida
- Superfamily: Macropodoidea
- Family: Macropodidae
- Subfamily: Macropodinae
- Genus: Macropus
- Species:
- Macropus fuliginosus (Desmarest, 1817)
- Macropus giganteus Shaw, 1790
- Genus: Osphranter
- Species:
- Osphranter antilopinus Gould, 1842
- Osphranter bernardus (Rothschild, 1904)
- Osphranter robustus (Gould, 1841)
- Osphranter rufus (Desmarest, 1822)
See our information on Kangaroos. Check out other blogs by Koh Lin.
