20100417 Su-jin Park S16 Journal5

20100417 Su-jin Park S16 Journal5

KANGAROOS

Kangaroos are very interesting animal to me. So I will introduce them.

Of all the countries in the world Australia has some of the strangest animals, many of them quite unlike the animals of other countries. Many of the animals of Australia have the habit of carrying their babies in pouches to keep them safe. Animals with pouches are called “marsupials”. Some of these are tiny creatures, no bigger than a mouse. But the largest and best known of them, the kangaroos, are often, when they stand up, taller than a man. Some marsupials live all the time in trees, while others burrow holes in the ground. Some eat the flesh of other animals, but most live on grass or the leaves of trees.

Each family of kangaroos is led by a large buck, a male kangaroo, which is known as the “old man”. He is the father of the family, and he rules his wives and the young bucks very strictly. He will fight fiercely with other old-man kangaroos to keep his own wives or win others from his rivals. The female kangaroos are called “does”.

When a baby kangaroo is born it is only about an inch long and quite naked, blind and helpless. All it can do for itself is to breathe, and to climb through fur. It climbs through its mother’s fur into her pouch, and there it stays for about four months. The mother kangaroo keeps her pouch closed at first, and then after some weeks she lets her baby put out his head out and look around, and then he begins to nibble the grass as his mother moves through it. A young kangaroo is called “joey”.