Hopping Into The Summer

Greetings friends and welcome to this week’s blog post. This week we’re going to mob up with our kangaroos. Note that I said “Mob” up, a group of kangaroos is referred to as a mob. Yes a mob, now let’s hop on over to a couple of really cool marsupial facts.

First of all there are 4 different species on kangaroo. The red, antilopine, eastern grey and the western grey. Red kangaroos like we have at Timbavati Wildlife are the largest species of both kangaroo and marsupial. Marsupials are animals which have pouches and they use this to carry and grow their young in.

Kangaroos are the most famous of the marsupials but there are other marsupials like opossums, wombats and dasyurids. The kangaroo seems to just be the most famous marsupial. Here’s how famous a marsupial the kangaroo is. Everyone can tell you that a baby kangaroo is called a “joey” but what do you call a baby opossum? See you didn’t know that, guess what, it’s called a “joey”. Ironically you also call a baby koala a joey, I think we have a marsupial pattern emerging here.

Here’s a great fact, hist history records the word Kangaroo being used on the 4th of August 1770. According to legend, Lieutenant James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks were docked for boat repairs and they saw a roo standing on the banks of the Endeavour River. They asked a local what the animal was called and in his native language he said, “I can’t understand you.” I can’t understand you in his language sounded like Kangaroo in english. So that’s what they called it. Now of course this is all legend but it’s an entertaining legend.

We have roos all day long! We also have private tours available by appointment for those of your who would like an enhanced experience. Check out this video on Kangaroos for more cool fun facts!