text x_quick_Title2=Class: Marsupialia~Order: Macropodidae~Family: Macropus~(Macropus giganteus)
text x_quick=Where in the World~\
` Eastern grey kangaroos are found in the eastern regions of Australia. A subspecies lives in Tasmania.~\
` In most places, the eastern grey kangaroo has the same range it always had, but its numbers are dropping and the animals are threatened. The Tasmanian subspecies population has declined severely there, they are endangered.~~\
Take a Look!~\
` Not including the tail, an eastern grey kangaroo male can be almost five feet long, while females are a bit smaller. By itself, the tail can be about three and a half feet long.~~\
All in the Family~\
` The eastern grey kangaroo's closest relatives are the western grey kangaroo and the red kangaroo. More distant relatives include the wallabies and wallaroos.~~\
Just the Facts~\
` Female kangaroos are called does, males are called boomers, and the young that follow after its mother is called a joey.~\
` Eastern grey kangaroos like company usually, a group of up to 10 kangaroos (mostly females and their offspring) stay together in a group called a mob.~\
` When a kangaroo is sitting, it uses its tail for a brace. When it walks, the kangaroo goes on all fours-plus-tail it for a five-legged pace. When they are alarmed, kangaroos jump away on their powerful back feet.~\
` The kangaroo's long tail acts as a rudder at high speeds to help the kangaroo change directions quickly.~\
` Eastern grey kangaroos like to graze on grass when they can get it, but they can also consume much rougher low plants - they can even digest cardboard!~\
` Like many animals in warmer regions, kangaroos can go for quite a long time without any water. They get the moisture they need from the plants they eat.~\
` All kangaroos are marsupials - their offspring are born underdeveloped and grow up in a pouch on the mother's stomach.~\
` Eastern grey kangaroos have about one young each year. ~\
` The female is pregnant for only about 30 days - her offspring is poorly developed when she gives birth, and it crawls into her pouch to keep developing.~\
` A newborn stays in its mother's pouch for about five months. Then it leaves the pouch occasionally, but leaps back in to rest or if it becomes scared.~\
` In the wild, eastern grey kangaroos probably live for an average of seven years, in captivity they can live to be twenty.
;Life Style
text x_life= Kangaroos sure do look strange - there's nothing like them in North America. Their head looks a bit like a deer, or a really large rabbit, but beyond that, it's hard to draw comparisons. They don't even move like any animal we're familiar with. The powerful back legs let the eastern grey kangaroo leap along at a rapid pace - one once jumped an amazing 44 feet in one bound! (Take a look at where you live - could that kangaroo jump from one end of your home to the other?!) Most kangaroos don't make such dramatic bounds, but their records are still impressive. At a fast pace, an eastern grey kangaroo can cover almost 30 feet in one hop, and at slower speeds, a hop can cover about six feet.~\
Eastern grey kangaroos don't always hop to get where they want to go. Hopping can be very tiring! So when a kangaroo wants to move along at an easier pace, it walks. But not like you do - kangaroos have figured out a new way to walk! Most creatures that walk use a diagonal rhythm - a dog moves its front right foot with its back left foot, then it moves the opposite diagonal pair. You don't walk on all fours, but if you think about it, you use a diagonal pattern, too. When you step forward on your left foot, where is your right hand? It swings forward. And when you step on your right foot, your left hand swings out. You've got a diagonal pattern going, like a dog or a horse, but while standing upright. But a kangaroo has one thing that you don't have: a strong, powerful tail. When it wants to walk, a kangaroo balances on its front feet and its tail while it moves both back feet up at the same time. Then it rests its weight on the back feet and move the forefeet and tail up. ~\
In fact, the tail is so strong that if a kangaroo decides it wants to kick something (like a kangaroo that's trying to set up a date with the kangaroo's girlfriend), the kangaroo can balance all its weight on its tail while it kicks out with a mighty wallop at the new guy. Legs that can jump 30 feet in a bound can inflict quite a lot of damage! Kicking is a last resort for the kangaroo, though. If it's trying to discourage a competitor, kangaroos will box with their front feet to see if they can knock each other over. Usually, the largest wins, and so only the largest and healthiest get to mate. (That's good news because those strong, healthy kangaroos will pass their health on to their children.)~\
A female kangaroo isn't pregnant very long. She carries her child in her uterus for about a month. When her baby is born, it is absolutely tiny, and not very well developed. Mostly, all it has is a hungry mouth and strong front paws, which it uses to pull instinctively along mum's fur and into the pouch on her belly. And that's where the baby stays while it continues to develop. The first thing the newborn does is latch on to one of mum's nipples, which swells inside its mouth until it couldn't let go if it tried. That keeps it safely in place until it's grown up a bit. The newborn stays comfortably in the pouch for a long time - it won't even come out to look around for about 10 months. The kangaroo that peeks out for the first time looks like a smaller version of mum or dad. During the next month and a half, the young kangaroo takes ever longer and longer trips outside. But the little kangaroo still leaps into the pouch if it is scared, and it comes back to nurse from its mother. (At this stage, the young is called a 'young-at-foot' or a joey.) Before it is a year old, the joey is ready to leave its mother's pouch for good. By that time, chances are good that mum will be pregnant again, and the cycle starts all over again.~\
;Habitat
text x_hab= Kangaroos, like almost all the marsupials (say mar-SOO-pee-als) in the world, live in Australia. (There are about 250 different species of marsupials and 170 of them live in Australia. The rest live in Central America, except for just one species that lives in North America, do you know what it is? It's the opossum.) About 49 million years ago, marsupials were all over the planet. They were the dominant life form, and they got to Australia by going from South America and through Antarctica. (Back then, the continents were much closer together.) Then, mammals began to take over, and the marsupials died out everywhere else except Australia, which has very, very few native mammals.~\
Grey kangaroos are found across most of the huge continent of Australia. There are two types - the western, and the eastern. The western grey kangaroo is sometimes found pretty far to the east, which can be a bit confusing, but you can count on the eastern grey - it lives its entire life in the eastern part of the continent! At the top of Australia there's a peninsula that, on the map, looks like it almost touches the island of Papua~New Guinea - it's the Cape York Peninsula, and that's about as far north as the eastern grey kangaroo goes. Going south from there, you run into the state of Queensland. (Australia is divided into six really big states.) Eastern Grays are found in the eastern part of Queensland and below, into much of the states of New South Wales and Victoria. (Western grey kangaroos drift pretty far east here, and share these states with the eastern Grays.) Finally, on the island of Tasmania at the most southern part of Australia, the eastern Grays live in the northern and eastern parts of the island. They're having a hard time there, and the Tasmanian subspecies of the eastern grey kangaroo is in more danger than the ones on the mainland.~\
Eastern grey kangaroos live in open forests and nearby grasslands. They can live in a variety of habitats
