June 19, 2009: Pocket Pet

[xoxoxoBruce]

Pocket pet, or maybe pouch pal.

This extraordinary photograph shows something that looks more like a baby alien than a life form here on Earth.
But it is in fact of a baby kangaroo - still in its mother's pouch, 25 weeks before it will emerge into the world.
As if the image is not astonishing enough, it was only made possible because the mother remembered an act of kindness by humans many years before.

Acclaimed Sydney science and wildlife photographer Jason Edwards captured the endearing moment after the mother allowed him to push a camera into her pouch - but only because she trusted humans.
Mr Edwards was talking with a researcher in the Sturt national park in north-west New South Wales when she mentioned that a female red kangaroo she had hand-raised years earlier before releasing her had returned to the fold.
'The researcher had raised the orphaned baby after its mother had been killed by a car,' said Mr Edwards. 'The researcher let the 'roo go back into the bush five or six years before, and so it had become a wild red kangaroo,' he told Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
~snip~
'She must have had good memories of being raised because that's a rare thing for a mother with a young joey in her pouch,' said 40-year-old Mr Edwards. When he believed he had won the confidence of the mother, he decided he was close enough to try to take a picture of the baby in the pouch.

Quit a remarkable picture, but I think that Joey needs his nails clipped.


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