Kangaroo - one of the most known and interesting mammals of the world. There live these animals only in one place - in Australia therefore till the 18th century the people did not know about these beings yet.
As the legend says, in 1770 when James Cook for the first time landed on coast of Australia, he saw a big animal who moves jumps, and asked natives, what is it. Aboriginals answered him in the language that on sounding it was remotely similar to the word "kangaroo". And this name was assigned to marsupials by animals. Today zoologists know 50 species of a kangaroo, all of them differ by the sizes, coloring, the habitat, but their common feature is existence of a bag.
Types of a kangaroo
The biggest kangaroos have weight about 80 kg, they have powerful hinder legs, narrow shoulders and small front pads similar to human. Thanks to the fact that the kangaroo is able to transfer the weight of the body to a tail it can put with one movement terrible paws to the opponent and move jumps up to 3 meters to height and 12 in length. Speed which they can reach varies from 30 to 50 km/h.
The most known species of a kangaroo are giant. They live in Australia.
Whether kangaroo males have a bag?
Initially all representatives of a kangaroo had a bag. But eventually it atrophied at males behind uselessness, and current representatives have only special femoral stones on which it kept earlier. And at females everything remained as before: the bag fixed in the bottom of a trunk serves as the real shelter for small kengurit. A huge number of myths is connected with these animals. Was considered earlier that kangaroos breed exclusively vegetativno, that is from mother's nipples. And in the 19th century the zoologists considered that at the birth mother takes a cub in a mouth, and then puts it in a bag to one of nipples. Quite recently scientists found out that a month later after conception the small kengurenok, weighing about 750 g, independently reaches mother's bag, and it does not help it with it.
What is interesting, mother of a kangaroo can let out the kid from a bag only when wants it. It occurs thanks to strong muscles on a stomach at a female.
There the kid begins to eat mother's milk through one of 4 nipples, and its structure depends on gender and age of the kid. If is born kengurit a little, then they receive milk, different in structure, too. Why does that happen, still remains a secret. Covered from temperature drops and predatory animals, the cub begins grow very quickly, and by the end of the 6th month it can already get out of a bag, and after the 8th month moves independently.