(New York) A second baby tree kangaroo made its public debut this week in New York, poking its pink head out of its mother’s furry white pouch.
Matschie’s tree kangaroo cub, or Dendrolagus matschiei, was born in December and is the second baby from the same mother since 2022. It was also the third of its kind to be born at the Bronx Zoo since 2008.
The tree kangaroo species is only pregnant for about six weeks before being born and immediately crawls into the pouches of its marsupial mothers, the zoo said in a statement. It takes about seven months for the young to begin emerging from the pouch.
There are only about 2,500 tree kangaroos in the wild and 42 in captivity, the zoo said. In a statement Friday, a spokeswoman for the Bronx Zoo said the kangaroo’s birth was important to the zoo network, which aims to preserve genetic diversity among endangered animals.
Jessica Moody, curator of primates and small mammals at the Bronx Zoo, said, “It’s a small population and because of that, births aren’t very common. So it’s a rare and exciting event.”
Tree kangaroos are native to the Huon Peninsula in Papua New Guinea, where they are threatened by human activities such as habitat destruction and hunting, the statement said. They live primarily in trees and are smaller than the more familiar red kangaroo of Australia. An adult tree kangaroo weighs between 9 and 11 kilograms. Baby kangaroos are about the size of a human thumb when they are born, but can grow up to 76 centimetres.
Wildlife restoration programs often rely on zoos for genetic diversity. For example, wolves reintroduced into the wild often receive pups born in zoos, reducing the risk of inbreeding while increasing wild populations.