Animals

Kangaroos weigh less than 2 grams when they are born. The tiny baby, called a joey, climbs up its mother's belly and into her pouch. The mother can't touch it because it is so tiny. She licks a path in her fur for it to travel along. Inside the pouch it grabs onto one of four teats and remains attached to it for about nine months.
Milk is automatically fed to the joey, and the milk changes according to the joey's needs as it grows until it no longer needs milk.
At nine months the joey will start to leave the pouch for increasing periods of time,returning always to the same teat for a feed until it is weaned.
A female kangaroo generally has another baby in her womb 'in suspense', which means it has developed just a little bit and then has stopped and waited. When a joey leaves the pouch, the mother starts the development of the one in her womb again, and it is born a few weeks later. Then she will have one tiny helpless joey in her pouch, drinking the kind of milk it needs to develop, and she will have another joey that is out of the pouch but which returns to feed on milk from another teat in her pouch. That milk will be different from what the tiny joey is drinking, because the older joey needs milk that will help it get strong as it hops around.

Kangaroos weigh less than 2 grams when they are born. The tiny baby, called a joey, climbs up its mother's belly and into her pouch. The mother can't touch it because it is so tiny. She licks a path in her fur for it to travel along. Inside the pouch it grabs onto one of four teats and remains attached to it for about nine months.
Milk is automatically fed to the joey, and the milk changes according to the joey's needs as it grows until it no longer needs milk.
At nine months the joey will start to leave the pouch for increasing periods of time,returning always to the same teat for a feed until it is weaned.
A female kangaroo generally has another baby in her womb 'in suspense', which means it has developed just a little bit and then has stopped and waited. When a joey leaves the pouch, the mother starts the development of the one in her womb again, and it is born a few weeks later. Then she will have one tiny helpless joey in her pouch, drinking the kind of milk it needs to develop, and she will have another joey that is out of the pouch but which returns to feed on milk from another teat in her pouch. That milk will be different from what the tiny joey is drinking, because the older joey needs milk that will help it get strong as it hops around.

Kangaroos belong to a group of marsupials called macropods, which means 'great footed animals'. Macropods have strong back legs with long feet. They hop on their back legs when travelling, using the muscular tail as a balance. Hopping in this way is an energy-efficient way of travelling long distances. Their front legs are small. When moving slowly, usually as they graze or to change position, the tail and front legs prop up the animal, and the back legs move forward.. this is called 'crawl walking'. Kangaroos are good swimmers, and will sometimes escape a threat by going into water if it is nearby.
Kangaroos live in groups of ten or more called mobs. Mobs can number over 50. Living in a group means there is protection for the weaker members. There are always some of the mob looking up so danger can be spotted quickly. The kangaroo has few natural predators. The thylacine was its main predator, but is now extinct. Dingoes are a threat, as are introduced species such as foxes and feral dogs or cats.
The mob feeds at night on grass and other low growing plants. Kangaroos drink water when they find it, but can go for long periods of time without drinking. They rest in the day.

Design a "dream machine" for hunting and you'd come up with something very close to a cat. From the smallest domestic to the biggest "king of the jungle," felines are gifted in all the bodily tools and techniques needed to chase prey in the wild or toys in the living room: speed, athleticism and the killer instinct.
Born to RunIf a cat were an Olympic athlete, the only marathon it might win would be in sleeping. But watch out in the sprint events. The cat would leave its competitors in the dust. Oddly enough, it is the cat's fondness for sleep that makes it such a speed demon. Sleep is its way of conserving energy for the explosive bursts of power it needs for a successful chase. More often than not, these brief, energy-sapping episodes of running prowess are punctuated by yet more slumber. But hunting is not the only arena for showing off a cat's running ability. Sometimes its speed is put to the test when the cat itself is the target of a chase. Felines that survive in the wild, especially on open plains, rely heavily on their ability to run — much more so than domestic cats — because their habitats put greater onus on stalking and surprise attack. Given cause, though, all cats are gold-medal winners in high-speed pursuit.