Saturday, August 14, 2010
Creature Feature: Tree Kangaroo.
How can you not love a kangaroo? They hop, and that alone is hilarious. Their babies are called joeys, which mother 'roos carry around in awesome pouches. They're like Australia's equivalent of deer, and we all love deer thanks to that traumatic scene in Bambi.
That movie also made us love skunks.
It doesn't matter that they are capable of drowning dogs or viciously kickbox. Kangaroos are so silly that making them talk did not make Kangaroo Jack any funnier.
Just about the least funny kangaroo in the world.
Now, imagine one in a tree. If you did not laugh, congrats: You're a cyborg.
Ditto if you don't melt at the face on one of these things.
Tree kangaroos (genus Dendrolagus) are exactly what the name says they are: kangaroos adapted to living in trees. They are native to New Guinea and the mountainous area around Queensland, Australia.
Bar the adorable face and arboreal habits, tree kangaroos are just like regular kangaroos. They still have the extremely large hind legs common to all macropods, bear their young in pouches, and eat plants.
Then you see the claws, and realize that this creature could gouge your eyes out with one swipe.
To climb, they hop, sliding along their forelimbs. Awkward though they may be on land, tree kangaroos are amazingly agile in the treetops. They can leap all the way down to the ground from 18 meters (59 feet) up! It must run in the family.
The really odd, wacked-out family.