The national animal of Australia is the kangaroo. This will likely not come as a surprise to most people. The kangaroo is doubtless Australia’s most iconic animal and one that people most strongly associate with Australia. It has acted as Australia’s official animal and symbol since 1908.
One thing about Australia is that its wildlife is highly unique.
There are many, many species there that you don’t find anywhere else.
The kangaroo is definitely the most well-known of these animals, a bipedal marsupial that is found natively almost nowhere else on Earth.
Today, we’re going to look into everything you need to know about Australia’s national animal.
What is the national animal of Australia?
The national animal of Australia is the kangaroo.
Kangaroo is actually a broader family of four different marsupial species.
Typically, the term describes the red kangaroo, which is the largest species in the family.
This is usually what people are picturing when they think of kangaroos.
However, you also have antilopine kangaroos, eastern grey kangaroos and western grey kangaroos.
They live mostly in Australia but also in New Guinea.
Marsupials are members of the broader class Marsupiala, all of which are endemic to Australia, Wallacea, and the Americas.
The most well-known distinguishing feature of this family is that they carry their young in a pouch, which kangaroos are certainly known for.
But you’ll also see this behavior from opossums, koalas, wombats, wallabies, and bandicoots.
Kangaroos are also known for their powerful hind legs.
Their feet are adapted for bounding along and they use their powerful, muscular tail for additional balance.
They have developed specialized teeth which very much set them apart from other mammals.
Their incisors can take grass right from the root at the ground and then it is chopped and ground by their molars.
The two sides of the lower jaw are not fused together, giving them a much wider bite.
The larger species tend to be a great deal more successful than the smaller ones.
The large species are so common that in parts of Australia if not all of it they are considered pests to livestock and crops and so residents are legally allowed to shoot them.
They are also frequently hunted for meat, leather and to protect land.
So, though they are an important Australian symbol, they are also not without their problems.
So, these marsupials are fascinating animals much detached from the mammals we know evolutionarily—so why did Australia choose it as their symbol?
Why is Australia’s national animal the kangaroo?
The simple reason Australia decided to make the kangaroo its national symbol is because people already heavily associated the country with the animal.
They are so numerous and so hard to miss in Australia that almost everyone came to associate the country with them directly.
Thus in 1908, it was decided to add the kangaroo to the country’s national coat of arms and make it the official animal symbol of the country.
One of the more specific associations of the kangaroo is its association with Australia’s rugged, wild, and vast landscape.
There has always been an important sense of pioneering spirit among Australians and in Australia and these creatures bounding the countryside freely are certainly excellent symbols of that.
They represent that sense of pioneering adventure which is so important to both Australia’s modern origins and to its present state.
But there is also a broader sense of the kangaroo as being a unique symbol of Australia’s natural and cultural heritage and identity.
Again, though there are some in New Guinea, most people tend to assume kangaroos are only found in Australia.
The two are interlinked in a way that simply cannot be separated.
What’s the difference between a wallaby and a kangaroo?
Kangaroos and wallabies are certainly very closely related and ultimately belong to the same taxonomic family.
Sometimes, they are also part of the same genus, depending on the individual species.
To look at a wallaby you would certainly be forgiven for simply thinking it was a very small kangaroo.
They are very closely related, but kangaroos are particularly categorized as the four largest species of the family.
Informally, the term “wallaby” is simply a designation for macropods—that is, the family of marsupials that includes things like kangaroos, wallabies, and quokkas—that are smaller than kangaroos.
It’s really just a question of size, then!
Do kangaroos eat other kangaroos?
Kangaroos do not eat other kangaroos—they are herbivores and do not eat meat.
The males may sometimes fight with one another to establish dominance in a social group or to win a mate.
They will balance on their tails while trying to knock their opponent off balance.
This is an important part of kangaroo social life.
However, they are not cannibals and do not eat each other.
They lack any faculty for rending flesh from another kangaroo, let alone digesting it.
Kangaroos are powerful animals and fights can certainly get bloody, but they are not cannibals.
Kangaroos are fascinating creatures, then.
Again, other than comparable species in Australia itself, there is really just nothing like them.
They are without doubt the most iconic animal in Australia and perhaps the most iconic symbol of the country in general.
They are powerful and dangerous creatures that will not tolerate you in their space, but they are ultimately peaceful creatures who just want to eat plants and raise their young.