Australia’s great kangaroos are marvels of nature. They hop like grasshoppers – only further; they eat grass like sheep – only better; they box like men – but never in anger; and they carry their young about in built-in nests that offer all the comforts of home.
An adult great gray kangaroo, for example, can jump 9 meters at one bound. (The record observed leap measured 13.5 meters!) When fleeing from danger, they attain speeds in excess of 30 miles per hour (almost 50 kilometers per hour). But if a kangaroo cannot outrun his pursuer, he heads for water if possible. Kangaroos have been known to sit in waist-deep water and drown pursuing dogs by holding their heads under water. But if there is not enough water around, a kangaroo will use the great claws on his hind feet as defensive weapons. And they can be deadly.
Australian sheep ranchers in some districts have found that raising sheep seems to be good for kangaroos. The more sheep a rancher has, the more kangaroos he will probably also have. This occurs because the sheep eat down the best of the grass but leave the poorer grass, which then takes over the range. Kangaroos thrive on the less succulent grass which the sheep spurn, so the land supports more and more kangaroos even as it can accommodate fewer and fewer sheep.
As for boxing, young kangaroos do this among themselves for sport. When they are trained to box with men, the trainer’s chief object is to make sure they don’t “forget themselves” and use their deadly feet.
But it is the kangaroo’s portable nursery which is its greatest marvel. To appreciate this nursery fully, we need to look at its occupant. If you had never seen or heard of kangaroos, but somehow had an opportunity to examine a just-born specimen, you couldn’t possibly imagine what the moist little lump would look like when it grew up.
That’s because kangaroos at birth resemble nothing so much as an extremely undeveloped fetus. They weigh only a gram or less (1/30th of an ounce!) and are only about 2 centimeters long. But more importantly, their limbs, are merely lumpish precursors of what they will become. The babies can neither see nor hear. They cannot even suck their mother’s milk.
But there is one well-developed part of the baby kangaroo – and that is fortunate indeed for it. The toes and claws of its front feet are needed immediately, for the baby must crawl from the womb exit up to its mother’s pouch – a distance many times its own length. Mother kangaroo watches intently during the three to five minutes this trip takes, but she will not intervene unless junior becomes unduly distressed.
Once in the warm pouch, junior squirms around until he finds one of the two milk-producing teats. When he takes this into his mouth, the end of the teat swells up, so that he could not get loose from it even if he wished. But that’s the last thing he wants! He wants food and warmth and shelter, and mother’s brood pouch supplies all of these. Mother kangaroo even has special muscles which pump the milk into her baby’s mouth.
In effect, junior has found a second womb in which to finish his development. It will be several months before he will be able to detach himself from the milk supply. By that time his weight will have increased more that 1,000-fold, to several kilograms. He will then sport a coat of soft fur, and he will look like a young kangaroo. He will also have developed a great curiosity about the outside world, so he’ll begin spending a lot of time with his head outside the pouch. When his mother stops to graze, he may hop out and nibble the grass himself. During this stage of growth he makes friends with other kangaroo youngsters, and he may even invite one home for a short visit, just as human children do.
Eventually, junior outgrows the pouch, but he will still return at lunch time for several more months. But when he’s ready, mother kangaroo lets him know it’s time to make his own way in the world. And by this time she needs the pouch for the next baby.
In fact, she’s had that next baby on the “back burner” for quite some time. Kangaroos normally mate again shortly after giving birth, even though the mother’s pouch is needed by the prior occupant well beyond the usual 30 to 40-day gestation period. But thanks to a special provision, the new fetus stops developing at an early stage and just quietly waits until the mother can give undivided attention to the new baby. When the way is clear, some mysterious signal is sent, and the fetus resumes development.
There are a number of features about the rearing of young kangaroos that make us realize that an intelligent Creator arranged it all. The undeveloped fetus and the “second womb” dovetail much too neatly to be accident. It would be ridiculous to argue that need forced the evolution of this arrangement, for the mother’s needs and baby’s needs are very different. In fact , the needs here are all on the infant’s side. The mother had no biological need to equip a nursery for her offspring. But even if a lengthy succession of kangaroo mothers felt so inclined, they wouldn’t know how to go about it. That needed a Master Designer and an All-Powerful Arranger.
More proof of prior planning is revealed by the sped-up development of the infant’s front toes, enabling it to reach the pouch. The swelling of the teat inside the baby’s mouth, and especially the mother’s ability to pump milk into it, add to this proof. Each generation of infants would have died without these provisions.
The crowning proof of God’s design is the arrested development of the next baby until the earlier one is ready for independence. The overruling urge of life, one commenced, is to grow to maturity. Once the egg is fertilized, nothing can stop its development but death. That is the universal norm. But here is an exception. The kangaroo egg is fertilized; it begins the normal process of reproducing by cell division, until about the 100-cell stage is reached. At this point it just stops, like a train on a siding. Then, when the “all-clear” signal comes, it gets back on th main track just as if nothing had happened. This could never be a “learned” response. It had to be built into kangaroos from the beginning.
So we see that yet again, the beasts of the earth teach us about God, as Job told mankind long ago, “Who doesn’t know that in all these, the hand of Yahweh [that is, God] has done this…” (Job 12:9) But Job also knew that it is never enough merely to acknowledge God as Creator. He went on to say of God: “in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind” (verse 10).
God controls whether we live or die. In His hand is our very breath. Thus it is vital that we know what God is like – whether He is cruel and vindictive, or anxious to be a loving Father to us. We need to know how to approach Him, and how to please Him. And God has been pleased to give us this information, in a book we call the Bible. It tells us about God, and about ourselves. It tells us also about God’s only begotten Son, and why he came to earth to die. It tells us how we may become sons and daughters of God, through belief in His Son. It is truly the most important book in the world. But it reveals its riches only to those who truly seek.
(All Scripture is quoted from the World English Bible translation.)