A baby kangaroo of a rare species, Goodfellow’s dendrolague, was born at the end of December at the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. This species lives in Papua New Guinea, Oceania, and is endangered.
Currently, only its small head is sometimes visible. A baby kangaroo was born at the Menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. He was sighted by animal keepers on December 22 for the first time, which would date the mating back to July 11.
“After 44 days of gestation, the baby is at the larval stage, it is as small as a large grain of rice and will migrate on the woman’s hair to reach the marsupial pocket. It usually happens at night. She gets into position seated and she prepared a small path of saliva for the youngster to reach the marsupial position quietly”explains Aude Bourgeois, veterinarian and deputy director of the Jardin des Plantes menagerie.
A childbirth that is not without risk. Because if in nature the animals are in a solitary mood, in a zoo, they live in cohabitation. “The risk is not having detected the mating 44 days before and leaving the male with the female. If the male is present, there is a great risk that the young will fall to the ground and there will be no has no further development. Then it goes into the pouch, attaches to a pacifier and stays there for 8 to 10 months. It is only after 4 to 5 months that it will emerge”explains Aude Bourgeois.
The parents of this little animal come from other animal parks. Kau Kau, the mother, arrived from Belfast in 2019. The male, Saleb, who is 8, comes from a German zoo.
These kangaroos, Goodfellow’s dendrolagues, are marsupials and live in the forests of Papua New Guinea, a huge archipelago located in Oceania. It is a species in decline because hunted for their meat and victim of the decline of their natural habitat, forests being replaced by crops.
“This species is particular, they are arboreal. We see it in their morphological adaptation. They have a fairly long tail which serves as a pendulum for them to move from branch to branch. They are essentially herbivores, they will eat bark, plants , flowers. They like hibiscus flowers.”explains the manager of the Menagerie.
And to add: “As it is a very poor diet from a nutritional point of view, they are not very active. Most of their time in nature consists of resting. They are rather nocturnal and crepuscular, which explains why they nap in the middle of the day. They are active at the end of the day and in the morning.”
The little kangaroo will stay many more months at the Menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes since he will stay 8 to 10 months in his mother’s pouch and will leave after he is weaned, on the 13e month. The father, frustrated at not being able to be present, has been authorized to join the mother and the cohabitation is going well.
It must be said that this is their second child. “He went to another park. It’s a rare species in zoological parks”specifies Aude Bourgeois.
According to her, these breeding pairs make it possible to “contribute to the preservation of the species. These reserve populations must be able to continue to grow. Each birth is important for the population in terms of genetic diversity. The little one will go to another zoo to form a couple that will have constituted by the breeding program coordinator”.
For the latter, “what justifies having animals in captivity is to have animals threatened in their country of origin and to save their species. Small animals threatened, because we are on an area of 5 hectares”.
In the meantime, the little one who will soon have a name, will gradually come out of his mother’s pocket, to discover the world and the visitors.
