Short Stuff: Why do kangaroos hop?

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“I don't think there's a more important year for black people.”

Listen to look back at it on the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here for Dave or just hopping along, talking about kangaroos and how they hop.

That's right. I want to thank our old colleague, Kristen Konger for writing this article from House to Forex back in the day and creator of Unlady, like the podcast too. As well as a Jennifer Horton wrote another article that I used. Great.

Jennifer and then take the San Diego Zoo website and net geo all pitched in for this one. I thought this was a particularly well researched short stuff. So I should have known that Jennifer Horton and Kristen Konger had something to do with it. Yeah, so we're talking about kangaroos a little bit mainly going to get to how and why they hop but we should start out by talking about the fact that ruse or marsupials or

pouched mammals because they have a marsupium, which is a little pouch where they're little joys develop. Yeah, we talked to think a lot about this in the naked mole right episode where essentially like the marsupial fetus does not develop as long inside the body of the mom as it does inside the pouch.

Essentially at some point it's what you would call born but really it's just crawling

out of the birth canal, outside into the world for a second and into the pouch and then

the little joy latches onto a nipple in there and the nipple grows three times in size just like the grinch is harsh and the so the little joy couldn't let go of the nipple even if he or she wanted to until they develop a little further. It's quite ingenious hats off natural selection. That's a great one.

Yeah, that's maybe the fact of the podcast for me. That's kind of nitty. Oh, I'm sorry. I took that. I didn't realize that.

No.

“What do I have to always take the fact of the show?”

I like to, you know, I mean I know it's in my contract and not yours but I'm willing to give every now and then. It's very generous. Thank you. All right, so Australia is obviously what people, you know, what comes to mind when you think

of Marceau Peels in general because coalescent kangaroos, but we have done a great episode on the opossum which live all over the place, especially north central and South America. But we're talking about kangaroos and wollabies here because they don't have four legs like our opossum friends. They have two big ol' feet and two little littleer arms.

Yeah, that's a great way to think about it. They don't have four legs, they have two legs and two arms and it makes sense. Like if you've ever seen a kangaroo or you just bring one to mind if you're capable of using your mind's eye, they're sitting on their feet and they're standing or sitting upright and they're little, almost titanic arms are just kind of hanging out.

They're not doing much of anything. Yeah, except boxing probably.

The kangaroo, the first sightings apparently traced back to a Dutch merchant name Francisco

Peelsert who got shipwrecked off the coast of Australia in 1629 and about 150 years later, they were pretty well known throughout Europe and by 1791, they had brought those things over to London, England. Here's the facts of the podcast for me, Chuck. Okay.

“Can I take this one too or should I tell you a double up baby?”

So the name kangaroo, the word, as far as anyone is able to say, we don't know for sure, it's apparently an aboriginal word for "I don't know" in that awesome, I don't know. That's pretty funny, it is. Here's the deal though, as kangaroos are the only large mammals to hop and that's basically as like their, you know, bunnies will hop a little bit but the kangaroo moves around primarily

by hopping and I guess you wouldn't consider a bunty a large mammal anyway.

they didn't hop because Australia was a rainforest at the time so those kangaroos were climbing around for a long, long time. Yeah, so they actually developed and helping them hop long before they actually started to hop, we called it the fourth toe. If you look at a kangaroos, but you can see how it's

“hopping and check I think I've kind of set us up for an ab break and we're going to come”

back and finally talk about how kangaroos hop, what do you think?

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“Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap little Kim's boobs at the VMAs?”

Oh, what when Kyle Hay said the George Bush didn't like black people? I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do a little Kim? Well, you can find out on the look back at a podcast. I'm SamJet and I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down and try to make sense of how we survive including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about crack in the eighths. To be clear,

84 is big to me not just cause a crack. I'm down with a talk about crack or David. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm just playing. Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack. So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have eggs on the table. I'm so...

Why are you fishing and sensitive? I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah, for me, it's one of the most important

years for black people in American history. Listen to look back at it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, where I left off Chuck. I was talking about the fourth toe and this is the design element that allows the kangaroo to hop because if you look at a kangaroo's foot, but the first toe looking at the kangaroo's foot from the inside of the foot outward, the first toe is pretty puny. It might not even be there. The second and third toes

They're okay. They're like, "Smallish and they each have a nail, but they seem to be fused together." So like web toes almost. Like my sister.

“Then when you get... Oh yeah, I didn't know she had web toes cool. Is she a fast swimmer? No, that's what everyone always asks. It's just the second, third toe on one foot, it's always been stuck together.”

But surely, it would have to give you an advantage to some degree. I don't know. I can't remember the last time I swam with her. Well, next time you get a chance to register and let me know how it turns out. All right. Finally, we get to the fourth toe and the fourth toe is like this is massive beast of a toe. And it's in line with the leg bones of the kangaroos legs and this is where the actual hopping begins. Yeah, that's an actual adaptation. And like you said, that preceded their ability to hop, so I'm not even sure what the deal is with why they adapted that to begin with.

But maybe it's just because they went from rainforest to sort of dry grassy plains and they needed to get around more. And I don't know, learned it eventually. They do have a fifth toe we should mention that provides a little bit of support. But if you look up like the foot of the hind leg, like, you know, from behind, they have these really, I mean, you can't see this on the inside, but they have these really strong elastic tendons that store energy up for those massive massive jumps. Yeah, like a spring, when they go downward, all of that tendon gets a bunch of energy, kinetic energy stored in it, and then when they bounce upward, it gets it's released. And it can send them flying Chuck, I had no idea how far they can hop and how fast did you.

Yeah, but it's always fun to relearn that, you know, because it's pretty astounding.

Okay, so they can go up to 15 to 20 miles per hour. Yeah. And for those of you in Australia who don't know, that's about 24 to 32 kilometers per hour. That's fast. That's like golf cart speeds at top speeds, even. That's faster than a golf cart. Yeah.

So we could jump right over either of us, Chuck. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're taller than I am, so you might get your forehead grazed.

It could just barely clear me. I'm five foot 11 and a half if I'm fully honest. Yeah, they would look at me and just feel like no problem. Shorty. They did just free willy right over you. I used to be five ten. Now I'm more like five nine. I'm shrinking as we all do.

“What is up with that? He's shrinking. You know, but I mean, does that mean our vertebra are fusing together? Like our knees are getting shorter. Have we compacted the shin bones and our legs and that's what's doing it?”

That doesn't make any sense. Well, we should do an episode like a shorty maybe on the shrinking as you age because that's a definitely thing. That's why like you see an old man as he's giant ears. They didn't know it's looked that way. I didn't know that. Yeah. Wow. What a development. All right. So back to the kangaroo. We need to talk about their tails a little bit because they have those huge tails that act as a counterbalance to the hind feet. So if you look at a kangaroo hop that tail moves down.

Like in midair that tail is moving down to meet kind of where the feet are and when they land the tail raises. So it kind of just does this little opposite motion to balance everything out. And it makes a really satisfying boring sound. Of course. So what's great about this. You said that the kangaroos, the only land animal that or an only large mammal that hops. And the reason why it hops is because it's actually a tremendous adaptation for moving quickly across land in a really efficient manner. Because the way that the kangaroo is built, the faster they hop, the less energy they have to expend. It's a pretty beautiful system.

Yeah. It's pretty crazy. And one of the most efficient travelers in the animal kingdom overall. You know that like you said, they have that great range and part of what's going on with their efficiency is as they have a like when they're bending down to jump and then leaping up. That's contracting and suppressing their respiratory system, which actually is like makes it more efficient. It makes those stomach muscles contract and expand and just forces air in and out without like having to do so, you know, by using your own energy.

Yeah. And they also have to use less muscle energy in their legs because when they jump really far high and fast.

“When they land those super elastic tendons that help them hop, just contract even further. And that means that they expand or sprawling, I think, is the technical term even further.”

So when they get going, they're really just they can just keep going a while. They're also their heart is really attuned to this kind of endurance workout, right? Yeah. It's when they're not going fast, when they're just kind of hopping from place to place and grazing, that's when it's harder.

And they have to end up using their tail to kind of balance themselves as basically like a well a third foot.

Yeah. Yeah. Why does it say fifth in here? That's so weird. I know because they specifically said that they're two front arms, you know. Hey, well, maybe I'll get in touch with Connor gives me a good reason to get in touch with her. So what the hell did you mean this fifth leg thing all those years ago? You're going to ruin her week. She's like, who is this?

I guess we'll close quickly just on a little, you know, I mentioned the wallaby. The slight differences between the wallaby and the roof. Mainly it's the kangaroo is just a lot bigger. They have a lot more length between their ankles and their knees and they're just taller. They can be like eight feet tall, whereas a wallaby is maybe like three feet, a little lower. Can you really say it any other way than that? I don't think so.

“I mean, why would you anyway? Yeah. This is probably long after your wheelhouse, but did you ever watch Rocco's Modern Life?”

Never hurt. It's a great cartoon. Yeah, it's a cute little cartoon. It was on Nickelodeon and Rocco was a wallaby. Oh, nice. Did you ever watch Darkwing Duck?

Never hurt of it. No, that's not it. What was the duck with Jason Alexander as the duck? Oh, I don't think I don't think I know such a show. It was like a raunchy, like superhero duck show. That was pretty good.

Whatever the name of it was, look it up. Jason Alexander George and Seinfeld played the main duck. Oh, well. That was a good one too. Yeah, I think Darkwing Duck is like a duck tail spin off. That's not what I'm talking about. All right. Well, I mean, if we're recommending animated shows, it might as well. And we're in Australia. I got to recommend Blueie again. Still watch that.

Okay. I never watched that one.

So, so stepping out of the animated shows, but continuing with the recommendation.

Oh, boy.

“I watched the Jake Jill and Hall movie anime last night.”

Oh, yeah.

It was Denise Villeneuve.

Uh-huh. Have you seen it? I saw it back then.

Me and it is a good movie.

Yeah, crazy ending. Yes. But so like it was one of those movies that I was like just sitting there thinking about it after word. Yeah. And so I love those because if you go look them up online, there are people who have given great thought to explaining these things.

“And I found, I think on a slash film, a really great explanation of what was going on.”

But before warned, if you watch anime, you may regret reading the explanation of it. It's almost to me it was better before I knew and I just had had to accept it on its own terms. Yeah. Love that movie. All right.

Well, that's it for anime and that's it for obviously kangaroo hopping, right? That's right. Short stuff is out.

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