Congratulations! You have successfully spotted the first animal in the blog! Its the ever famous red kangaroo, and one of the most iconic animals in Australia along with the koala and kookaburra. It is a species that is currently under no threat of extinction.
The red kangaroo is usually found in Australia’s inland deserts, scrub land and open grasslands. They are able to stay in arid environments for long periods of time due to being able to preserve enough water and fresh vegetation in that area for them to survive. As you could see from your picture you’ve taken of the kangaroo we saw, there is little to no trees to shade under. There is evidently no water, and it’s dry and barren. There are little shrubs poking out of the ground, but other than that it’s just rocky and earthy. This is the usual status of their habitat and they usually soak in the sun and lie on the floor like this photo I took when I was taking another on a tour:
I also brought along a distribution map to show you where you can find the Red Kangaroo.
As you can see from the map, most of the Red Kangaroos are found in South Australia and the Northern Territory. New South wales has some where we have arid land and they’re in various parts of Western Australia. Tasmania, evidently doesn’t have much. Where the darker colours are, there is a higher concentration of them. As the colours get lighter, the concentration decreases. Right now, we are getting close to the coast of New South Wales, which is why we’ve had a declining number of Kangaroos being spotted by our tour group.
It’s fascinating how they can survive even with such capabilities to preserve necessities isn’t it? Well, I’ll let you in on a secret. Red kangaroos have certain characteristics that aid them to live in such situations. The main key is their physical adaptations.
Red Kangaroos are able to keep their body temperature at 36⁰ due to their insulating fur, staying in the shade and reducing their activity levels. They also have extremely strong legs, in which they use to travel. It can reach over 56 kilometres per hour with those hind legs, can cover approximately 8metres within a single leap and jump about 1.8m high! Kangaroos have strong, long tails and sharp claws and teeth in which they use to fight against predators or even other red kangaroos for mates! As you may know, kangaroos are known for “boxing” and I’ll show you a quick video by National Geographic Wild about it.
Their physical distinctiveness is also used for eating food, which are mostly shrubs and other vegetarian foods available where they live. As you can see, the Red Kangaroo is able to survive in such an inland area with these certain characteristics. Without them, it would be evidently hard. To make things a little easier for you, I’ll draw up a quick sketch of a Red Kangaroo and label the main physical attributes it has. Here you go!
We’ve been traveling for a while now, and we seem to have covered almost everything about the Kangaroo’s physical features and how it adapts to its environment. So to finish it off, i thought it would be nice to share some interesting facts with you, while we head to our next destination. Click on the kangaroo below to go to my list.
Investigating Australia's Physical Environments 