Animal · Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom
Red-necked wallaby
Notamacropus rufogriseus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The red-necked wallaby is a medium-sized kangaroo from eastern Australia, named after the reddish-brown fur across its neck and shoulders. It grazes at dusk and carries its young in a pouch.
Picture credit: Calistemon (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the red-necked wallaby live?
Home: Coastal forests and heathland of eastern Australia and Tasmania.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: about 90 cm long, plus a 75 cm tail. It weighs about 16 kilograms. On the menu: plants.
The story behind it
Wallabies are simply smaller kangaroos, and the red-necked wallaby is one of the bigger ones: sitting upright it reaches about chest height on a child. It lives in forests and heathland along Australia's east coast and in Tasmania, dozing in the shade through the day and coming out at dusk to feed on grass, roots, leaves and bark. A newborn is blind and no bigger than a jellybean. It climbs into its mother's pouch by itself and stays there for around 280 days before it starts hopping about outside. The species is common, and animals that escaped from parks now live wild in Britain, Ireland, France and New Zealand.
Find it on the globe
Red-necked wallaby is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
What is the difference between a wallaby and a kangaroo?
They belong to the same family; wallaby is just the name used for the smaller kinds. A red-necked wallaby weighs around 16 kg, while a large red kangaroo can weigh more than 80 kg.
How long does a baby wallaby stay in the pouch?
About 280 days, roughly nine months. The newborn is blind and tiny, climbs into the pouch on its own and drinks milk there until it is strong enough to hop around outside.
What do red-necked wallabies eat?
Only plants. They graze on grasses and herbs and also nibble roots, leaves and tree bark, feeding mostly at dusk and through the night when it is cooler.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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