Keepers at Chester Zoo in northwest England applauded the rare species of tree-kangaroo when they first saw it emerge from its mother’s pouch.

Smaller than the Australian kangaroo, the Goodfellow Hare is a marsupial that lives in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. Due to deforestation and poaching, their population has halved in 30 years.

The zoo’s science team monitored the newborn’s development with a special endoscope placed in his mother’s pouch a few weeks after he was born last July.

As Dave White explains, marsupial birth is one of the most complex processes in the entire animal kingdom: the newborn is not yet fully developed and instinctively follows the path in the mother’s abdomen until it enters the marsupial.

When he gets there, he will attach himself to a nipple to eat, and after about six months, when he is big enough, he will open his eyes and stick his head out of the bag to explore the environment.

The tree kangaroo is expected to leave its mother’s pouch in the coming days and begin learning its first jumps and tree climbs.

RES-EMP source