As one of the most endangered animals in the world, Kayjo the baby tree kangaroo is the newest member of a very small club.
And he’s pretty small himself — when he was born at Chester Zoo in England, he was no bigger than a jellybean.
“Every birth like this is incredibly important,” David White, a team manager at the Chester Zoo, told the BBC, adding that the Upton-by-Chester program was “securing a future for this magnificent species.”
Kayjo and his mom Kitawa are Goodfellow’s tree kangaroos — a marsupial listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
In the wild, Goodfellow’s tree kangaroos can only be found in the dense tropical rainforests and deciduous forests of Papua New Guinea, where their survival has been threatened by widespread deforestation due to logging, mining, and palm oil plantations.
In the last three decades alone, their population has declined by at least 50%.
They also have historically slow breeding rates.
“Tree kangaroos don’t breed quickly — a joey is a huge energy investment for the mother,” White said in a press release from the Chester Zoo.
“That’s why this birth is such a significant moment,” he continued. “It’s taken a huge amount of work from keepers, vets and scientists, all collaborating to support the joey’s safe arrival. Everything we’ve learned is helping to protect this remarkable species.”
Unlike terrestrial kangaroos, Goofellow’s tree-kangaroo’s arms are disproportionately larger than its legs. That way, it can climb and swing from tree limbs with ease, all while using its long tail for balance.
“When people think of kangaroos, they rarely imagine small, fluffy animals living high in the treetops,” said Matthew Lloyd, the tree kangaroo expert at the zoo.
To track the joey’s progress, conservationists used tiny endoscopic cameras to follow along as he developed in Kitawa’s pouch.
“With so little known about tree kangaroos, Kitawa’s joey is a particularly special arrival, and represents a major step forward in understanding and protecting this remarkable species,” Lloyd said.
See the evolution of Kayjo’s growth in his mother’s pouch in the “pouch cam” footage from the Chester Zoo. [Warning: the video footage may be graphic to some viewers.]
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Header image via Chester Zoo / SWNS
