There are several animals
of the Kangaroo family referred to as Rat-kangaroos. This is sometimes written as Rat
Kangaroo. Note that in English,
when an animal’s name is made up of two different types of animal, the
second one is the type of animal while the first is what it looked like
to whoever named it; so a Rat-kangaroo is a type of Kangaroo while a
Kangaroo-rat is a type of Rat.
Most
Kangaroos have much bigger back legs than their front ones, but the
Musky Rat-kangaroo has all four legs of similar length. They do not tend to hop as much as
the larger Kangaroos.
Only One Left
The
Musky Rat-kangaroo, Hypsiprymnodon
moschatus, is the only surviving species of the
family Hypsiprymnodontidae. It
is the smallest of the Macropods (Loosely,the Macropods are the
Kangaroo group of animals.) The
maximum weight of the Musky Rat-kangaroo is about one and a half pounds
(three quarters of a Kilogram) while the average is about a pound (Half
a Kilogram.)
Habitat
This animal lives in the
tropical rainforests of North Queensland. It
can be seen during the day in the Crater Lakes National Park. Your best chance of seeing wild ones
is to go on some of the walking trails round Lake Eacham, and keep your
eyes open.
At
night you may be lucky enough to see Lumholtz’s Tree Kangaroos.
Food
This
animal mainly eats fruit such as Figs, Lilly-pillies, Quandongs,
Walnuts and the fruit of vines.
They also eat soft coated seeds, tubers and other roots as well as
fungus.
Their
diet is generally richer than that of the larger Kangaroos, and their
simpler digestive system would be unable to get enough nutrients from
the high roughage food of many of their relatives.
Threats
The Musky Rat-kangaroo is
threatened by the destruction and fragmentation of its habitat. Because their rainforests are being
split up into separate small areas by
clearing
for other land use, they cannot go from one area to another. This can lead to local extinction,
and contributes to local inbreeding which can weaken populations.
