Why does kangaroo have pouch

Enter and space open menus and escape closes them as well. Tab will move on to the next part of the site rather than go through menu items. Female opossums carry their babies in their pouches after birth, and then often on their backs while they are young. Photo via Shutterstock. Have you ever seen a photo of a kangaroo with a joey — a baby kangaroo — in its mother's pouch and been awed by the adorableness? Those pouches aren't unique to kangaroos. It's the hallmark feature of marsupials, a classification of mammals that carry their young in their pouches after birth.

Kangaroos are perhaps the most famous of the marsupials, many of which live in Australia, according to the San Diego Zoo.

Other Australian marsupials include the koala and the wombat. Only one marsupial — the opossum — lives in the United States, according to National Geographic. Adult female opossums have pouches just like kangaroos and other marsupials. The pouches are used for carrying around their babies after birth. The pouches are a critical part of the reproductive process because marsupials do not have as long a gestation period as other mammals, the San Diego Zoo reports.

Baby kangaroos do poop in the pouch. They also pee in the pouch because they cannot go anywhere else in the first few months of their lives.

When young kangaroos are a few months old the begin to leave the pouch from time to time. But they continue to go back to the pouch but that brings in even more dirt, for example, when the kangaroo played in the dirt or hoped on the beach.

The pouch is an almost entirely enclosed area where dirt collects easily. Other animals with pouches may have the opening to the rear, for example, if they are digging in the dirt and that would fill up the pouch.

The pouch is also the place where kangaroos raise their joeys. What is a joey? Joeys poop and pee into the pouch and that means mother kangaroo has to clean the pouch regularly. The mother also cleans the pouch the day the new joey is born. Joeys not only poop and pee into the pouch but when they get older they bring in the dirt when they move in and out of the pouch. Kangaroos start to leave the pouch at 8 months old to explore the world but they continue to go back into the pouch for a few months.

They live in it and also pee and poo in their first home. So how does a kangaroo clean the pouch? A female kangaroo cleans her pouch by licking it out. She puts her long snout into the pouch and simply licks it out. A female kangaroo can easily clean around a joey which is still attached to a teat in the pouch. Are female kangaroos born with a pouch?

Female kangaroos are not born with a pouch, the pouch develops when the female kangaroo grows up. But he has the paw and forearm strength to drag himself to his mother's protective pouch! The joey attaches himself to the nipple for several weeks before he's strong enough to let go.

A mama kangaroo is able to nurse joeys of different ages at once. Each nipple is capable of producing milk with different nutritional content than the next! It allows an endless cycle where she can get pregnant again right after giving birth. In some species of 'roo, the joey stays ensconced in the womb for a whopping 10 months. She pops her head inside and licks it clean. No problem: He just pops his head back in the pouch for a sip every so often. Truth be told, joeys don't so much "venture out" as they do fall out and plop to the ground.