This is the adorable moment a rare “mini kangaroo” peeked out from its mother’s pouch after being born at Chester Zoo.
The dusky pademelon (Thylogale brunii), also known as a dusky wallaby and as ‘mini kangaroo’, is a hopping marsupial from Indonesia.
They are born 30 days after mating and continue to grow in their mother’s pouch until they fully emerge at around six months.
The species only grow to be around two feet tall, which has provided the small, hopping marsupial with its “miniature kangaroo” nickname.
The baby was born last September to proud mum Styx and dad Kai, both aged five.
An adorable video shows the tiny animal, whose sex is still not known, peeking out of its mother’s pouch for the first time at Chester Zoo, in Cheshire, in the United Kingdom.
Lead zookeeper Megan Carpenter said: “When a dusky pademelon joey is first born it’s only about the size of a jelly bean and so it stays in the safety of mum’s pouch, where it receives all of the nourishment it needs to grow and develop, for around six months.
“It was at the point that we noticed mum Styx was slowly gaining weight that we began to monitor her behavior and feeding patterns extra closely, and we were hopeful that she was rearing a baby.
“Seeing the magical moment her new arrival took its first peek out of the pouch has brought us a huge amount of joy.
“It’ll be a few weeks until the new baby fully emerges and is hopping around and exploring all by itself – that’s when we’ll be able to determine if it’s male or female and give it a fitting name.
“The decline of dusky pademelons has mostly gone under the radar for quite some time as little is known about these Indonesian kangaroos.
“But with the new information we’re gathering and the scientific observations our teams are making about how they live and rear their young, we can help better inform future conservation action in the wild and bring some much-needed attention to this highly threatened species.”
Chester Zoo is currently one of four in the UK caring for the species and just 56 live in zoos across the whole of Europe.
Over the last two decades, its population has declined by 30 percent as a result of trapping, hunting, and deforestation to make way for rice farming and logging.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has officially listed the species as vulnerable to extinction.
