Naked and pink and about the size of a lima bean, a baby kangaroo is born.  It immediately begins to crawl toward its mother’s pouch.  It spends the next six months inside the pouch growing.  Then it ventures out a bit each day, but still returns to the safety of the pouch most of the time.  After another two months, the joey finally leaves the pouch for good, although it still comes to its mother to feed until it is about one year old.  By this time, another baby may be living in the pouch.  The mother kangaroo is such a good mom, she can produce two different kinds of milk to feed two different ages of young.

Moms aren’t the only cool kangaroos.  All kangaroos have awesome things about their bodies.  Their thick tails are nearly as long as the rest of them.  These tails help kangaroos to keep their balance when they are making giant leaps—up to 26 feet!—and act as a “fifth leg” when they are hopping very slowly.

When you are hopping around outside in the summer, you might start to get a little sweaty.  It stays pretty hot in Australia all the time.  Kangaroos sweat just like you when they are up and moving.  But, when they are just lying around, they will stop sweating and pant, just like your dog, to keep themselves cool.  Another way they chill out is to drool and lick their forearms.  The wind blowing over this moisture helps carry heat away from their bodies.