THE NEW-BORN KANGAROO.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20070, 9 April 1927, Page 7

THE NEW-BORN KANGAROO.

FRESH RESEARCH. What he described as “a good-book on the mammals of Australia” by Le Souef, Burrell and Troughton, is welcomed by Professor J. A, Thomson in the Empire Review. Professor Thomson says that he tested the workmanship bv the account of the passage of the new-born kangaroo into its mother’s pouch, a subject in regard to which even Australians sometimes talk rank nonsense. The mother carries the young one for 39 days before birth. When born the young kangaroo is only about an inch long, and, not only is it blind and naked, but it is so far from being finished that it cannot even suck. Its forelegs and head are disproportionately large and mobile, and the> little creature uses them in its adventurous journey over its mother’s skin in search of the pocket or marsupium, which develops round the four milk glands. Perhaps the mother helps her offspring with her lips, but there is n» doubt of the riskful instinctive journey, which may take half an hour. The larva, as we venture to call it, moves among the hair by energetic efforts with its forelimbs, accompanied by continuous sideways movement of its head. It sometimes loses its way for a time at least. When it reaches, the cradle, and touches a nipple, it stops moving and fastens on with its mouth. It would slip off again were it not for the peculiar adaptation that the nipple, pointed and firm at first, swells up in tho infant’s mouth and fills th© cavity so that it cannot be readily separated. Thin continues for about four months. In the early period, if not for the whole four months, the little creatbre is unable to suck, and the milk has to be forced down its throat by the contraction of a special muscle around the milk gland. The breathing arrangements are provided for by a specially elongated epiglottis guarding the windpipe, and an elongated cartilage in the larynx.' The two together are shunted forwards into the posterior end of the nasa] chamber, so that air can pass from nostrils to the lungs along a temporarily continuous passage.