When a baby kangaroo is born, it crawls into its mother’s pouch and stays there for a while (weeks or months, I don’t know), right? Presumably the young kangaroo gets some sort of nourishment during this time. Where does it urinate and defecate? In the pouch, or does it crawl outside to visit the little kangaroos’ room? Does it recycle waste, like hibernating bears?
As far as I know, the female Kangaroo cleans the joey like a cat does it’s kittens.
It’s a bit of a WAG but seeing as I’m an Aussie, I’ll put my 2c in.
The joey spends several months in the pouch before it can first leave; the time depends on the species.
You can find some interesting photos here, but I’m sceptical about the 9 month figure that site quotes as being the age at which the joey first leaves the pouch. For that particular species (Macropus rufus), I think the joeys start to leave the pouch around 6-7 months.
The joey of course gets nourishment during the time it’s in the pouch. Kangaroos are mammals, and the joey feeds from its mother’s nipple.
As for the cleaning, LeeJam has it. The mother licks the joey, and in fact the joey is stimulated to urinate and defecate by the licking.
I’m officially happy that I’m not a female kangaroo. This brings up a related question. If a human mother were to lick her baby clean of urine and feces, she would get ill. Excrements aren’t exactly health food. How come animals handle it so easily?
Excrement isn’t really dangerous unless an infection is present.
In the case of a joey or a kitten, the only infectious disease that the baby is likely to have is one that it caught from its mother. In which case, the mother’s immune system is already dealing with it. The mother can’t reinfect herself through the baby.
Urine rarely caries pathogens, and isn’t chemically poisonous, so there’s no problem there at all.
Substitute “feces” for “excrement” above.
<< Urine rarely caries pathogens, and isn’t chemically poisonous, so there’s no problem there at all. >>
In fact some people promote urine as a cure for many different kinds of problems:
Pro site - http://www.biomedx.com/urine/
Anti site - http://skepdic.com/urine.html
Grim
You wouldn’t care. Your senses of smell and taste wouldn’t register it disgusting. Fortunately for the little joeys.
Not sure about that. After changing who knows how many nappies of my own offspring, I can tell you that it often registered as “disgusting”. I still did it, though. Who else would have done it?
(“Feces” substituted for “excrement” at your request)
Are you sure? A while ago I read a newspaper article about the mental illness “Münchhausen syndrome by proxy”, which apparently causes mothers to claim that their children are ill, or actually MAKE them ill, to gain attention. A common action of these mothers is to inject feces into their children, since this produced a vague illness that was hard to diagnose. I understand that there is a difference between oral ingestion and injection.
So what you’re saying is that anilingus is totally safe as long as it is performed on a healthy person? Not to be too graphic, but that’d be a load off my mind.
I’ll let someone else field that question, Priceguy.
Injection is way the hell different from ingestion. Introducing fecal bacteria directly into the bloodstream will almost certainly cause illness. Ingestion, on the other hand, takes place almost entirely outside the body (yes, that’s right, your innards are technically, er… outtards). There’s no blood contact, and very seldom can bacteria cross into the bloodstream (it requires lesions, usually).
Now, there’s probably some illness and death caused to kangaroos by this practice, but not enough to threaten reproduction (not as much as the alternative, anyway). Same case with , uh, similar practices in humans. There is a risk from viruses, bacteria that get through, etc.
Note that the joey is feeding solely off mother’s milk during this time and the bacteria in it’s gut are of a limited type. Once a small mammal starts eating other foods, other nastier stuff may start to appear. But that usually means (in this case) the joey is out of the pouch part time and can use the “outdoor facilities”.
Note that since human babies get exposed to a wider environment early, and sometimes foods other than momma’s from day 1, the possiblility of pathogens is much, much higher. Rotifers can be easily transmitted just by changing the diapers of an infected kid. Ugh.
The whole marsupial birth jag is wild and crazy, man! My wife raises Wallabies and can answer (or find the answers) if you need to know more. You can get to her by clicking the little “www” link below.
Friendly little critters actually. Kinda fun to have a few around.
Favorite quote from 5th grade social studies: “Oh, that Nick-o-lie Lennin! He’s a dirty-bird!”
A side note to the OP. When you rescue a baby marsupial from the pouch of a dead mother, you often need to add adult faeces to its formula when weaning it. In the wild, the juvenile would eat adult faeces and thus ingest the bacteria necessary for the digestion of its natural diet - in captivity, you have to improvise.
What little link? Would love to click it, can’t see it.
The “www” button next to the “profile”, “email” and “buddy” buttons down at the bottom.
Thanks muchly. One step further away from utter newbiehood.
Always glad to help. And a belated welcome to the board!
Kind of a sidetrack, but juvenile Koalas deliberately eat their paren’t fecal matter so that their gut is colonised by the bacteria they need to break down eucalyptus leaves.