Choose the BEST kangaroo image : the final cut

This courtship portrait of a male Red kangaroo (left) and female shows the remarkable difference in both size and colour between the genders in the Red kangaroo.

Males are generally a bright rusty colour and the females are usually light grey yet they are the same species! Believe it or not, females are sometimes red and males can be grey.

Mungo National Park is my favourite place to watch kangaroos, it never fails to produce boundless opportunities to see both Red and Western-grey kangaroos. In wet years we sometimes see Eastern-greys!

Unlike Western-greys, Red kangaroos are cautious of humans and will move away fast at the slightest provocation. This pair stayed close to us for about 5 minutes allowing a series of magnificent back-lit photos that we’ve used a number of times.

Image: Michael Williams.
(Sadly Wildlife Guide and photographer, Michael Williams, passed away not long after this image was taken. You can see more of his images in this article and elsewhere on our website. Michael kindly donated this and many other great photos to Echidna Walkabout)

Where: Mungo National Park

Tour: Mungo Outback Journey

Magnificent male Eastern-grey kangaroo peering inquisitively out of the bushes. Caution and curiosity are present in its eyes and stance.

Eastern-greys are the tallest of our kangaroos, an embodiment of power and strength. Condensed testosterone emanates from them — you can smell it sometimes.

But with all that “maleness” these guys can be surprisingly timid and will bound off at the slightest hint of movement in their direction. That’s what this fellow is assessing: will I go or stay.

Image: Janine Duffy, Echidna Walkabout

Where: Western Plains near Melbourne

Tour: Wildlife Journey

Kangaroos encapsulate poise, power, grace and speed but most of all, balance……

Balance, or rather counter-balance, resides in the spring-loaded tail. Hidden deep in the pelvis short, powerful ligaments hold the heavy tail in place. At each hop these ligaments gain, then release, enormous amounts of energy.

This is the secret of the macropods that enables them to move at surprisingly high speeds using very little energy.

Here’s how it works.

In our image (above) the heavy tail has begun to move downwards and the feet are returning to earth. As soon as that happens the massive achilles tendons (in the legs) will pre load with energy caused by the fall and the tail ligaments will reach maximum tension causing the tail to spring upwards.

It’s the combination of these two actions that raises the kangaroo into the next hop, all in one fluid motion.

What makes a kangaroo’s hop so successful is this fact: the tail never hits the ground. By doing this kangaroos retain most of the kinetic energy of the previous hop for movement. Their tail is the counter balance that lifts them back into the air!

While all this is going on the kangaroo’s lungs will fill with air, pumped in by the simple movement of the hop. In one bound some kangaroos can cover up to 8 metres (24 feet) and keep doing it whilst breathing effortlessly.

A horse galloping at the same speed as this kangaroo would use up to four times more energy.

Image: Jeroen Wolfslag, Echidna Walkabout guest

Where: Western Plains near Melbourne, Victoria

Tour: Coast, Mountains, Outback