Marsupials, are they PETable?

Factual Questions
1

Let me preface this posting by stating that it is idle curiosity based on on a wierd dream I had last night, not a course of action I have any intention of persuing.

Some readers of these fouriea may recall that I will soon lose my canine companion of the last 15 years. Last night I had a wierd dream related to that that has piqued my curiosity:

So my dog died (not yet IRL) and i was queling to some stranger I met…turns out they were a breeder of kangaroos, and had a run joey they were unable to find a home for.

So, in my dream, I adopted the infant kangaroo.

The remainder of the dream was me calling vet after vet trying to find anyone on this continent who was willing and qualified to to care for a marsupial.
DON’T START. I know full well that a kangaroo would be a totally unsutable pet for me given my circumstances. I would never consider doing this OK?

But I am curious:

  1. Do Kangaroos, or Walabies, for that matter make decent pets?

  2. Is it possible to fine qualified vetrenary care for such in US?

  3. Is it possible tom give such a pet acceptable levels of exercise if you don’t have several fenced acers for it to cavort on?

  4. Given thier massive tail (used for balance when hopping, IMO) is it possible for such to sit in a normal automobile or motorcycle sidecar seat?
    Oh, one more thing: In my dream, I named the joey “Boing” I’m kinda proud of that thought!

2

First link I found on google was pretty cool: http://www.wallypets.com/

The Doctor

3

Oh my God do I want a wallaby.

4

When I was in college(Terre Haute, IN), there was an exotic animal breeder/collector outside of town who bred Basenji dogs…I had an interest in one as a pet, so I went to see them. I found that he also had several exotic animals as pets ,and published a classified ads type paper that had national listings…among the animals available were alligators, hippos, tigers(of course), black bears(one listed as “free to good home”), but I don’t recall any listings for kangaroos.

5

Many people have kept kangaroos as pets. They aren’t really affectionate animals once they become mature. The females aren’t too bad to have around, but they are more like sheep than cats or dogs. If you want that sort of aloof pet I would suggest a pig or a chicken.

Possible yes. Widely available, no. Having said that, if you have a good relationship with your vet she should be able to pick up sufficient knowledge for general consultations fairly fast. Most surgery or unusual illnesses will probably stay beyond the scope of most vets.

Roos don’t actually need much in the way of exercise, being one of nature’s laziest animals. They can travel many miles in a day but are just as happy on a quarter suburban house block.

The real problem isn’t space for exercise, it’s hygeine. Roos in the wild live in low densities and cover large distances. They really don’t tolerate land contaminated with their own faeces very well at all and are susceptible to a lot of gut infections if kept confined.

The other problem is stress. Something as normal as a dog barking for prolonged periods can be incredibly stressful on even the tamest roos and lead to severe stress related illnesses.

The sad truth is that macropods kept in urban areas have an average life expectancy of about 6 months. It makes me wonder what the average life expectancy of those thousand dollar wallabies is.

The tail is used primarily as a fifth leg while moving slowly. It is vital to a kangaroo’s ability to walk and for the males while fighting fight but surprisingly doesn’t seem to have any discernible effect while hopping.

And yes, they can sit in a car just as easily as a dog. Kangaroos mostly move around on four legs and while doing so they move and lie pretty much like any other four-legged animal.

What’s that Boing?
Sonny’s fallen over a cliff?
And he’s broken his leg?
And the plane with the smugglers has crashed and started a bushfire?
Nah, it’ll never work.

6

Australia has rules about exotic pets that probably don’t apply in the US (from the types of animals I’ve seen legally living in high rise apartments to name a few).
Yes, kangaroos can be quite sociable, but they are not like domestic cats and dogs and can be quite unpredictable at times, especially around breeding behaviours. I’ve also known people to have possums as pets and my all time favourite; wombats - but you need special licenses to have them, unless in some remote area where noone would know if you had a pet one or not. They will never be the cuddley cat or obedient dog that you might be thinking of.

7

Forgot to say - I really wish people wouldn’t get exotic pets - it’s bad enough that people don’t look after regular domesticated ones quite apart from the encouraging of the illegal trade and appalling transportation conditions involved in the illegal trade. Not that this has anything to do with your dream!

8

Though your post is mostly about kangaroos, there are other marsupials widely available as pets. I happen to own two Sugar Gliders and they make excellent pets. They take well to captivity, bond well with their owners, and live 12-15 years. Oh, and they figgin fly! (Well, glide actually, hence the name.)

9

Different critter, but my grandfather had an exotic pet-- a groundhog. He had shot a groundhog that was pilfering his garden, and when he went to inspect the corpse, he discovered it was a nursing mother. He looked around patiently until he found the den, and took the sole baby groundhog that was inside. He named it Georgina, for reasons known only to him and God.

Georgina used a litterbox. My grandfather first fed her milk he bought from a pet store, then later, whatever she seemed to favor. She liked iceburg lettuce, carrots and one particular brand of potato chips which wasn’t sold within a thirty mile radius, so he would drive to the next city get them for her.

She had a large pen with a box into which she could crawl when she wanted to hide. She only stayed in the pen at night-- during the day, she had the run of the house. She was extremely affectionate, which surprised me because I didn’t know they were social animals.

She was also a damned thief and built dens around the house in which to die her ill-gotten gains. One day, while cleaning the bedroom, grandma discovered that Georgina had chewed a hole in the underside of the boxspring and was building herself a summer home with papers pilfered from grandpa’s desk, including unpaid bills and stock certificates which she had wadded to suit her aesthetic tastes. There were also a few stray socks which struck her fancy, my grandmother’s missing watch and a padlock. (We never did figure from whence it had come. As to what she needed it for, my grandpa would grin and say, “Security.”)

My grandma, handy with a needle, made Georgina a selection of frilly dresses, which no self-respecting groundhog would wear. Georgina would tug them off and hide them.

Ever day, grandpa would go out and dig up a big shovel full of dirt and bring it in to her on a newspaper, because he thought there might be minerals or stuff in the dirt she needed to be healthy. When she got a little older, he built in a cat flap so she could go out into the backyard.

Then, one day, an amazing change came over Georgina. Grandpa called me, dumbfounded, and said Georgina had revealed herself to be a male, and henceforth her name was George. “That must have been why he hated those dresses,” Grandpa said, and I don’t think he was joking.

Sadly, George was scooped up by a hawk while digging happily in the back yard one day. My grandpa cried for days.

10

I’ve always wanted a wombat! I was mad at Luke Skywalker for a short period for bulls-eyeing them (yeah I know, “womprat”, but we didn’t have them fancy DVD’s with subtitles when I was a boy!)

I’ve read that they aren’t exactly cuddly critters? Don’t see many of them hereabouts.

11

I met a woman who kept a rescue possum. The mother was killed on the road and this was the only baby alive and still in pouch (don’t ask me how she came across it). She had raised it to adult and it was a very sweet animal - if not a tad dumb. I have convinced my wife to let me have a recsue possum (or skunk) if we happen across one that can’t be released and could be kept as a pet.

I’ve heard of people having rescue wombats as well. Damn cute animals those wombats.

12

Do a search for “wallaby breeder.”

I knew one pet wallaby; I was extremely jealous. Very affectionate, and just way cool. The same woman owned a bandicoot, a less appealing marsupial.

13

Wombats are several kilos of bad-tempered, smelly muscle. And they bite. Hard.

14

Indeed. I met a woman once whose job included catching wild ones for study. The method was to drive round in a ute (small utility) on the grasslands where wombat are to be found at night. Someone would be in the back of the ute (well dressed in heavy clothing, gloves etc), and when they found a wombat the person in the back would jump out and grab it. For several reasons (including better adapting to captivity) they’d try to catch immature wombats. Simple enough.

Bear in mind that this woman was not a small person. Quite on the heavy-set side, really.

She said that one evening she jumped from the ute, and grabbed a fairly small wombat (40 pounds worth or so). After it had dragged her bodily along the ground at a surprising speed for some distance, she concluded it was perhaps best to let go. Muscle indeed.

15

The OP did not ask about monotremes (the third kind of mammal), but I’m going to speculate anyway.

Platypuses would be completely unpettable – they need to live in a stream, and don’t like having people around at all. So they are hard to even keep in zoos.

Echidnas, on the other hand, can be kept in less demanding conditions. You’d need to surround them with something that they couldn’t dig through to escape (like concrete walls and a concrete floor under a layer of soil for them to live in.) However, they do tolerate human contact – I’ve patted one in a private zoo (those spikes are not sharp) – though they aren’t friendly like kangaroos and wallabies can be when they get used to humans feeding them. So it might be possile to keep an echidna in your back yard, especially if you have a good supply of ants for them to eat.

16

People keep sugarv gliders as pets. Lookk like flying squirrels except they are marsupials.

17

Sniff… that was suddenly so sad. :frowning:

18

Yeah, it was. I don’t think he ever got over it, really. He kept George’s pen in the living room for the longest time and wouldn’t let my grandma move it nor throw out the bag of pototo chips he had labled: “GEORGE’S-- DON’T EAT.”

I asked him this spring if he thought he’d get himself another groundhog baby. He teared up and said he remembered a phone call he had to make, and quickly left the room.

19

I wish I could own one.

20

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