A nine-metre leap
A red kangaroo can cover nine metres in a single bound and clear a fence nearly two metres high.
The outback
Red kangaroo
Osphranter rufus
A tall, rusty-red kangaroo with long ears, huge hind feet and a heavy tail.
- Size
- Up to 1.8m tall: the biggest marsupial
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- Dry plains across the middle of Australia
Bounds after you, then stops to look. Move your pointer and see.
When to look
Red kangaroo
Good to know
Six things about the red kangaroo
A baby the size of a bean
A newborn joey is about two centimetres long. It crawls into the pouch and stays for months.
A fifth leg
When it walks slowly, the kangaroo props itself on its tail and swings its back legs forward.
Cheap travel
Hopping uses less energy the faster it goes, because the legs work like springs.
No reverse
Kangaroos cannot easily walk backwards: the big feet and tail get in the way.
A mob
A group of kangaroos is called a mob. A big male is a boomer and a female is a flyer.
The real thing
Photos of the red kangaroo
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
How to spot one
Look at dawn and dusk, when they come out to graze. In the heat of the day they lie in the shade of a tree, hard to see.
How to help
Drive slowly at dusk in kangaroo country. Many are hit on roads, and wildlife carers raise the orphaned joeys.
Keep going