Normally female kangaroos give birth to an offspring every year. On birth the offspring climbs to its mother’s pouch and fastens onto one of the four teats and starts to feed. The offspring called joey often stays in the pouch for more than seven months. As the joey becomes larger, it becomes heavier for the mother to carry around in the pouch. Hopping for a mother carrying a joey becomes difficult. Several female kangaroos with a joey have been found to have been injured when trying to hop over a fence.
Given the problem of carrying a joey for almost seven months every year is being recognized as a nuisance. The kangaroo mothers have therefore decided to cut the pouch time for babies to 90 days. After 90 days, the mothers plan to leave the joey outside hoping it will feel safe enough to live in the wild outside the pouch.
The average lifespan of kangaroos varies and for some it is only about six years. The mothers obviously want to spend their annual holidays in peace and want some retirement time in the old age after producing 2-3 offsprings.
A reporter of thegarlic asked a representative of the kangaroo mothers why they were complaining so much about carrying the joey for about 200 days while human females carry a baby for 283.4 days on the average during pregnancy. The representative pointed out that the average life span of human females was more like 80 years. On the other hand kangaroo mothers only lived for perhaps 10 to 15 years on the average and some lived only about six years.
