tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/kangaroo-42698/articleskangaroo – The Conversation2023-08-21T04:09:37Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2027192023-08-21T04:09:37Z2023-08-21T04:09:37ZPainting the unfamiliar: why the first European paintings of Australian animals look so alien to our eyes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522531/original/file-20230424-24-mvgd9w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C1%2C1276%2C1074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Kongouro from New Holland, 1772, George Stubbs </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-573621">National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1772, Joseph Banks commissioned the foremost painter of animals in England, George Stubbs, to paint a dingo and a kangaroo. </p>
<p>To our modern eyes the paintings lack the vitality and strength of the animals we are familiar with in Australia. The kangaroo more closely resembles a rodent than a bipedal marsupial. The dingo’s glassy-eyed stare lacks any animation.</p>
<p>Stubbs was renowned for how well he captured horses and dogs. Even today, those paintings of his capture the lifelike individual essence of his subject. So why did his paintings of the dingo and kangaroo – some of the earliest European representations of Australian animals – look so strange?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-australia-v-england-in-battle-over-stubbs-masterpieces-19921">It's Australia v England, in battle over Stubbs masterpieces </a>
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<h2>‘To compare it would be impossible’</h2>
<p>Stubbs had not travelled with the 1768 Endeavour expedition to the South Seas. Instead, Banks commissioned him to paint from skins collected during the voyage. </p>
<p>While the journey was officially to chart the transit of Venus across the Sun from the vantage point of Tahiti, King George III also <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior-secondary/cook-and-pacific/indigenous-responses-cook-and-his-voyage/secret">secretly instructed</a> James Cook to search for the fabled Terra Australis Incognito and </p>
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<p>with the consent of the Natives […] to take possession of a Continent or Land of great extent […]in the Name of the King of Great Britain. </p>
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<p>Banks collected the skins of a “large dog” and a “kongouro” (thought to be a misinterpretation of the Guugu Yimidhirr word gangurru, which refers to the Grey Kangaroo) when the Endeavour pulled into safe harbour for repairs after striking the Great Barrier Reef in June 1770. </p>
<p>Banks recorded his <a href="https://statelibrarynsw.tumblr.com/post/147361252859">first impressions</a> of this very unfamiliar animal in his journal entry dated July 14 1770. </p>
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<p>To compare it to any European animal would be impossible as it had not the least resemblance of any one I have seen. Its fore legs are extremely short and of no use to it in walking, its hind again as disproportionately long; with these it hops 7 or 8 feet at each hop in the same manner as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerboa">Gerbua</a>, to which animal indeed it bears much resemblance, except in size […]</p>
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<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522532/original/file-20230424-16-lksybg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A simple pencil sketch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522532/original/file-20230424-16-lksybg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522532/original/file-20230424-16-lksybg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522532/original/file-20230424-16-lksybg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522532/original/file-20230424-16-lksybg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=875&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522532/original/file-20230424-16-lksybg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522532/original/file-20230424-16-lksybg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522532/original/file-20230424-16-lksybg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The first European drawing of a kangaroo, by Sydney Parkinson in 1770.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-european-drawing-of-a-kangaroo">Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sydney Parkinson, one of the artists who accompanied Banks, made five sketches of the dead animal after it was shot by one of the ship’s gamekeepers. </p>
<p>These sketches, the flayed (and possibly inflated) skins, Banks’ journal entry and his personal memories were the material that informed Stubbs as he made his preparations to paint these very unfamiliar animals.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-art-of-the-colonial-kangaroo-hunt-102169">Friday essay: the art of the colonial kangaroo hunt</a>
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<h2>The semantic memory</h2>
<p>Stubbs was lauded for his anatomically correct forms of horses and dogs. On occasion, Stubbs also painted exotic animals like the lions housed in the Royal Menagerie. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522534/original/file-20230424-26-80rbgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A beautiful horse" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522534/original/file-20230424-26-80rbgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522534/original/file-20230424-26-80rbgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522534/original/file-20230424-26-80rbgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522534/original/file-20230424-26-80rbgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522534/original/file-20230424-26-80rbgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522534/original/file-20230424-26-80rbgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522534/original/file-20230424-26-80rbgd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whistlejacket by George Stubbs, 1762.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/george-stubbs-whistlejacket">National Gallery</a></span>
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<p>But his paintings of the dingo and kangaroo were the first time he painted animals he had never studied from life.</p>
<p>Stubbs capitalised on the swell of interest in the return of the Endeavour by exhibiting the paintings at the Society of Artists in London 1773. </p>
<p>This brought the dingo and the kangaroo to the scientific community and public’s attention. The animals became the two most associated with the new world of Australia – adding greatly to Great Britain’s sense of national pride as the conqueror of new worlds.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522535/original/file-20230424-28-u53w6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522535/original/file-20230424-28-u53w6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522535/original/file-20230424-28-u53w6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522535/original/file-20230424-28-u53w6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522535/original/file-20230424-28-u53w6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522535/original/file-20230424-28-u53w6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522535/original/file-20230424-28-u53w6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522535/original/file-20230424-28-u53w6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=640&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of a Large Dog (dingo) by George Stubbs, 1772.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-573620">National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stubbs’ kangaroo painting set the standard for future representations of the animal until well into the 19th century, serving as a model for engravings and illustrations used in <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo7919484.html">scientific</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Account_of_the_Voyages">popular</a> publications.</p>
<p>But Stubbs’ kangaroo more closely resembles the rat-like Gerbua of Banks’ description than the creature we know today. This can perhaps be explained by Stubbs’s unfamiliarity with the animals. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543604/original/file-20230821-230558-4ympol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543604/original/file-20230821-230558-4ympol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543604/original/file-20230821-230558-4ympol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543604/original/file-20230821-230558-4ympol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543604/original/file-20230821-230558-4ympol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543604/original/file-20230821-230558-4ympol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1260&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543604/original/file-20230821-230558-4ympol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1260&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543604/original/file-20230821-230558-4ympol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1260&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An animal of a new species found on the coast of New South Wales. 1773 engraving based on Stubbs’ painting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Museum of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As an artist who had made a lifelong study of the anatomy and movement of animals, he would normally have relied on what psychologists refer to as “<a href="https://www.livescience.com/43353-implicit-memory.html">implicit memory</a>” when painting his subject in the studio. That is, the unconscious memory he would instinctively rely on from years of painting animals he was familiar with. </p>
<p>It’s a bit like riding a bicycle: once learned, it’s never forgotten. </p>
<p>In this case, Stubbs primarily relied on “<a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/semantic-memory.html">semantic memory</a>”, or general knowledge of his experiences in the world, to paint the unfamiliar by utilising the knowledge, written material and personal recollections Banks had given to him.</p>
<p>Having been told a kangaroo was a giant rat-like gerbua by Banks, it is understandable that Stubbs also relied on his implicit memory of rats and gerbuas to depict the kangaroo. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543606/original/file-20230821-153592-8a4cch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A kangaroo with a joey." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543606/original/file-20230821-153592-8a4cch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543606/original/file-20230821-153592-8a4cch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543606/original/file-20230821-153592-8a4cch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543606/original/file-20230821-153592-8a4cch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=987&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543606/original/file-20230821-153592-8a4cch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1240&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543606/original/file-20230821-153592-8a4cch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1240&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543606/original/file-20230821-153592-8a4cch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1240&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An animal found on the coast of New Holland called kanguroo, 1809, by Thomas Thornton, based on Stubbs’ painting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Rendering the unfamiliar</h2>
<p>As an artist, I can relate to this. My paintings of unfamiliar landscapes in Scotland and Ireland always seem to depict trees that look like eucalypts. </p>
<p>Despite using the same brand of watercolours I have used my whole artistic life, the way I paint the interplay of light, shadow and hue on mountain passes, birch groves and fields of heather and gorse usually seems more gaudy than the dull blue-grey colours of the Australian bush. </p>
<p>Unconsciously, I overlay the hues of the Australian landscape onto my paintings of the British landscape in order to tone the gaudiness down – much like the English painters who conversely depicted the Australian bush as English landscapes. </p>
<p>Rendering the unfamiliar familiar. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/terra-nullius-interruptus-captain-james-cook-and-absent-presence-in-first-nations-art-129688">Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202719/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janelle Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How did George Stubbs, one of England’s foremost painters of horses and dogs, get Australian animals so wrong?Janelle Evans, Senior Lecturer, Critical and Theoretical Studies, Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2067522023-05-31T20:07:32Z2023-05-31T20:07:32Z‘An exciting possibility’: scientists discover markedly different kangaroos on either side of Australia’s dingo fence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529258/original/file-20230531-29-47k37p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C0%2C4977%2C2964&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia’s dingo fence is an internationally renowned mega-structure. Stretching more than 5,600 kilometres, it was completed in the 1950s to keep sheep safe from dingoes. But it also inadvertently protects some native species.</p>
<p>This makes the fence an unintentional experiment in the relationship between predators and prey. Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyad053">new research</a> examined how the fence affects a <a href="https://theconversation.com/dingo-dinners-whats-on-the-menu-for-australias-top-predator-103846">favourite prey</a> of the dingo: red kangaroos.</p>
<p>We found young kangaroos on the side exposed to dingoes grew more quickly than their protected counterparts. This has potentially big repercussions for the health of these juveniles.</p>
<p>The merits of the dingo fence are hotly debated, and there have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/lets-move-the-worlds-longest-fence-to-settle-the-dingo-debate-37155">calls</a> to pull it down or move it. That’s why we must seek a better understanding of how the fence affects the animals that live along it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="fence separating red landscape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529259/original/file-20230531-19-bc1bnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529259/original/file-20230531-19-bc1bnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529259/original/file-20230531-19-bc1bnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529259/original/file-20230531-19-bc1bnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529259/original/file-20230531-19-bc1bnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529259/original/file-20230531-19-bc1bnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529259/original/file-20230531-19-bc1bnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australia’s dingo fence runs for more than 5,600 kilometres.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>‘Stressful’ lives</h2>
<p>The dingo fence, formally known as the “<a href="https://www.daf.qld.gov.au/business-priorities/biosecurity/invasive-plants-animals/animals/barrier-fences/wild-dog-barrier-fence-panel">wild dog barrier fence</a>”, runs through Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia. It protects sheep and cattle to the southeast.</p>
<p>Extensive fencing can fragment habitats and disrupt ecosystems. Maintaining the fence costs about <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-australia-afford-the-dingo-fence-7101">A$10 million per year</a>. For these and other reasons, some have <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42977-021-00106-z">suggested</a> the fence be pulled down. </p>
<p>But how would removing the fence affect kangaroos that have lived without dingoes for up to 70 years? Our research sought to answer this question.</p>
<p>We assessed 166 red kangaroos from two isolated populations on either side of the fence in far northwest NSW. We did this using data collected as part of a licensed shooting program. We compared population size, age structure, sex ratio, growth rate and skull shape.</p>
<p>We expected kangaroos north of the fence – those hunted by dingoes – to differ from their dingo-free cousins to the south. That’s because their lives are more stressful, especially for young kangaroos and females that are <a href="https://www.publish.csiro.au/wr/wr9810255">killed by dingoes more often</a> than adult males.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/killing-dingoes-is-the-only-way-to-protect-livestock-right-nope-200905">Killing dingoes is the only way to protect livestock, right? Nope</a>
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</em>
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<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="female kangaroo scratches while joey lies nearby" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529261/original/file-20230531-15-19qmek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529261/original/file-20230531-15-19qmek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529261/original/file-20230531-15-19qmek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529261/original/file-20230531-15-19qmek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529261/original/file-20230531-15-19qmek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529261/original/file-20230531-15-19qmek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529261/original/file-20230531-15-19qmek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Female and young red kangaroos are targeted by dingoes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What we found</h2>
<p>As anticipated, we found more young and female kangaroos in the dingo-protected population south of the fence. But the story is more complex than that.</p>
<p>Young kangaroos south of the fence, up to about the age of four years, grew more slowly than those in the north. They were substantially smaller and lighter than their dingo-exposed counterparts.</p>
<p>This raises an exciting possibility: that the growth of kangaroos south of the fence has slowed in the absence of the dingo threat. </p>
<p>But maybe there was just more plant food available in the north, where there are fewer kangaroos compared to the south. Was this the reason the northern kangaroos grew more quickly?</p>
<p>As it turns out, no. We assessed the vegetation on each side of the fence using a decade of satellite measurements. We found there was probably less, not more, food overall for kangaroos in the north compared to the south.</p>
<p>More detailed investigation is needed into whether the types of plants differed on each side of the fence. But our results suggest the different growth rates were driven by predators, not food availability.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-dingo-fence-from-space-satellite-images-show-how-these-top-predators-alter-the-desert-155642">The dingo fence from space: satellite images show how these top predators alter the desert</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="wire fence on red earth" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529262/original/file-20230531-23-g4guwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529262/original/file-20230531-23-g4guwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529262/original/file-20230531-23-g4guwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529262/original/file-20230531-23-g4guwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529262/original/file-20230531-23-g4guwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529262/original/file-20230531-23-g4guwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529262/original/file-20230531-23-g4guwe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There was probably less vegetation north of the dingo fence than in the south.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>This raises important questions</h2>
<p>The differences between populations are even more striking considering the dingo fence in the area we studied was in disrepair until 1975. Before then, dingoes and kangaroos probably moved freely. So the changes we observed could have come about in as little as 17 kangaroo generations. </p>
<p>This would be unusually fast for an evolutionary adaptation. Instead, we suspect it’s the result of a more immediate response to the absence of dingoes, such as lower concentrations of stress-related hormones. These affect the health of mammals, and might have affected kangaroo growth rates in this case.</p>
<p>After about the age of four, the protected kangaroos had caught up and were the same size as their unprotected counterparts. But the unprotected kangaroos would have invested a lot more bodily resources into growing so quickly. </p>
<p>This would have left less energy for the animals to develop important functions such as their immune or reproductive systems. Or they might have had less fat reserves. </p>
<p>Conversely, protected kangaroos might have been healthier, or more fertile, because of their slower growth rates. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-dna-testing-shatters-wild-dog-myth-most-dingoes-are-pure-206397">New DNA testing shatters 'wild dog' myth: most dingoes are pure</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="two dingoes in the outback" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529263/original/file-20230531-15-ndetd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529263/original/file-20230531-15-ndetd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529263/original/file-20230531-15-ndetd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529263/original/file-20230531-15-ndetd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529263/original/file-20230531-15-ndetd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529263/original/file-20230531-15-ndetd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529263/original/file-20230531-15-ndetd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The research raises questions about how mammals respond to changes such as the absence of dingoes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Understanding the mammal response</h2>
<p>Our study involved only a single sample at one point in time. But it’s the first to comprehensively assess differences in a dingo prey species on either side of a fence. </p>
<p>Our results provide an insight into how prey populations might fare if the dingo fence is removed. But the implications are potentially even broader.</p>
<p>We must now investigate whether other native mammal species share similar differences across the fence. If so, this could help us predict how animals elsewhere in Australia are coping with rapid environmental change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vera Weisbecker receives funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH; CE170100015) and Future Fellowship FT180100634. She is a member of the Greens Party. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Corey J. A. Bradshaw receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frédérik Saltré receives funding from the Australian Research Council</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>D. Rex Mitchell receives funding from Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH). </span></em></p>The merits of the dingo fence are hotly debated, and there have been calls to pull it down. We need a better understanding of how the mega-structure affects species that live along it.Vera Weisbecker, Associate Professor, Flinders UniversityCorey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders UniversityFrédérik Saltré, Research Fellow in Ecology for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders UniversityRex Mitchell, Postdoctoral Fellow, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1857782022-06-28T19:58:33Z2022-06-28T19:58:33ZThis giant kangaroo once roamed New Guinea – descended from an Australian ancestor that migrated millions of years ago<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471017/original/file-20220627-24-fw6o00.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C15%2C5168%2C3430&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Illustration by Peter Schouten</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Long ago, almost up until the end of the last ice age, a peculiar giant kangaroo roamed the mountainous rainforests of New Guinea.</p>
<p>Now, research to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03721426.2022.2086518">published</a> on Thursday by myself and colleagues suggests this kangaroo was not closely related to modern Australian kangaroos. Rather, it represents a previously unknown type of primitive kangaroo unique to New Guinea.</p>
<h2>The age of megafauna</h2>
<p>Australia used to be home to all manner of giant animals called megafauna, until most of them went extinct about 40,000 years ago. These megafauna lived alongside animals we now consider characteristic of the Australian bush – kangaroos, koalas, crocodiles and the like – but many were larger species of these.</p>
<p>There were giant wombats called <em>Phascolonus</em>, 2.5-metre-tall short-faced kangaroos, and the 3-tonne <em>Diprotodon optatum</em> (the largest marsupial ever).
In fact, some Australian megafaunal species, such as the red kangaroo, emu and cassowary, survive through to the modern day.</p>
<p>The fossil megafauna of New Guinea are considerably less well-studied than those of Australia. But despite being shrouded in mystery, New Guinea’s fossil record has given us hints of fascinating and unusual animals whose evolutionary stories are entwined with Australia’s.</p>
<p>Palaeontologists have done sporadic expeditions and fossil digs in New Guinea, including digs by American and Australian researchers in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.</p>
<p>It was during an archaeological excavation in the early 1970s, led by Mary-Jane Mountain, that two jaws of an extinct giant kangaroo were unearthed. A young researcher (now professor) named Tim Flannery called the species <em>Protemnodon nombe</em>.</p>
<p>The fossils Flannery described are about 20,000–50,000 years old. They come from the Nombe Rockshelter, an archaeological and palaeontological site in the mountains of central Papua New Guinea. This site also delivered fossils of another kangaroo and giant four-legged marsupials called diprotodontids.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-the-giant-wombat-relative-that-scratched-out-a-living-in-australia-25-million-years-ago-141296">Meet the giant wombat relative that scratched out a living in Australia 25 million years ago</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>An unexpected discovery</h2>
<p>Flinders University Professor Gavin Prideaux and I recently re-examined the fossils of <em>Protemnodon nombe</em> and found something unexpected. This strange kangaroo was not a species of the genus <em>Protemnodon</em>, which used to live all over Australia, from the Kimberley to Tasmania. It was something a lot more primitive and unknown.</p>
<p>In particular, its unusual molars with curved enamel crests set it apart from all other known kangaroos. We moved the species into a brand new genus unique to New Guinea and (very creatively) renamed it <em>Nombe nombe</em>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/724328370" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A 3D surface scan of a specimen of <em>Nombe nombe</em>, specifically a fossilised lower jaw from central Papua New Guinea. (Courtesy of Papua New Guinea Museum and Art Gallery, Port Moresby).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our findings show <em>Nombe</em> may have evolved from an ancient form of kangaroo that migrated into New Guinea from Australia in the late Miocene epoch, some 5–8 million years ago. </p>
<p>In those days, the islands of New Guinea and Australia were connected by a land bridge due to lower sea levels – whereas today they’re separated by the Torres Strait.</p>
<p>This “bridge” allowed early Australian mammals, including megafauna, to migrate to New Guinea’s rainforests. When the Torres Strait flooded again, these animal populations became disconnected from their Australian relatives and evolved separately to suit their tropical and mountainous New Guinean home. </p>
<p>We now consider <em>Nombe</em> to be the descendant of one of these ancient lineages of kangaroos. The squat, muscular animal lived in a diverse mountainous rainforest with thick undergrowth and a closed canopy. It evolved to eat tough leaves from trees and shrubs, which gave it a thick jawbone and strong chewing muscles. </p>
<p>The species is currently only known from two fossil lower jaws. And much more remains to be discovered. Did <em>Nombe</em> hop like modern kangaroos? Why did it go extinct? </p>
<p>As is typical of palaeontology, one discovery inspires an entire host of new questions.</p>
<h2>Strange but familiar animals</h2>
<p>Little of the endemic animal life of New Guinea is known outside of the island, even though it is very strange and very interesting. Very few Australians have much of an idea of what’s there, just over the strait. </p>
<p>When I went to the Papua New Guinea Museum in Port Moresby early in my PhD, I was thrilled by the animals I encountered. There are several living species of large, long-nosed, worm-eating echidna – one of which weighs up to 15 kilograms.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471027/original/file-20220627-22-91nec3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Author Isaac Kerr poses for a photo, holding an Australian giant kangaroo jaw in his left hand" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471027/original/file-20220627-22-91nec3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471027/original/file-20220627-22-91nec3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471027/original/file-20220627-22-91nec3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471027/original/file-20220627-22-91nec3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471027/original/file-20220627-22-91nec3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471027/original/file-20220627-22-91nec3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/471027/original/file-20220627-22-91nec3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">I’m excited to start digging in New Guinea’s rainforests!</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are also dwarf cassowaries and many different wallaby, tree kangaroo and possum species that don’t exist in Australia – plus many more in the fossil record.</p>
<p>We tend to think of these animals as being uniquely Australian, but they have other intriguing forms in New Guinea.</p>
<p>As an Australian biologist, it’s both odd and exhilarating to see these “Aussie” animals that have expanded into new and weird forms in another landscape. </p>
<p>Excitingly for me and my colleagues, <em>Nombe nombe</em> may breathe some new life into palaeontology in New Guinea. We’re part of a small group of researchers that was recently awarded a grant to undertake three digs at two different sites in eastern and central Papua New Guinea over the next three years. </p>
<p>Working with the curators of the Papua New Guinea Museum and other biologists, we hope to inspire young local biology students to study palaeontology and discover new fossil species. If we’re lucky, there may even be a complete skeleton of <em>Nombe nombe</em> waiting for us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185778/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Isaac Alan Robert Kerr receives funding from the Royal Society of South Australia.</span></em></p>A peculiar giant kangaroo that once lived in New Guinea would have descended from a much more ancient form that migrated from Australia, between 5 million and 8 million years ago.Dr Isaac A. R. Kerr, PhD Candidate for Palaeontology, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1273222020-02-12T19:14:38Z2020-02-12T19:14:38ZIf you don’t eat meat but still wear leather, here are a few facts to chew on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311253/original/file-20200121-117949-vaz56x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=531%2C0%2C4333%2C3308&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The numbers of vegans in Australia <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-04-09/vegans-australia-red-meat-declining/10980270">is on the rise</a> – for many, ruling animal products out of their diet is a relatively straightforward decision. But deciding whether to eschew leather products can be more challenging. </p>
<p>For non-meat eaters who do buy leather, the rationale is usually something like this: if meat is being produced anyway, and it generates a handy by-product such as leather, why not use it rather than waste it? </p>
<p>But there is evidence leather is driving, or at least supporting, the profitability of animal harvesting in some cases. This raises serious moral questions for anyone who cares about animals but still buys leather products.</p>
<h2>Kangaroo leather: a case in point</h2>
<p>I’m a social policy expert who specialises in animal welfare legislation and ethics. I have also been vegan for about 20 years, mostly out of a moral opposition to factory farming.</p>
<p>Between 2001 and 2004 I worked for the <a href="https://www.wlpa.org">World League for Protection of Animals</a>, which was part of a global campaign <a href="https://www.viva.org.uk/what-we-do/about-us/media-centre/media-releases/victory-claimed-nike-plan-drop-cruel-kangaroo">against the use of kangaroo leather</a> in sports shoes.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/kangaroo-meat-puts-commercial-industry-and-animal-welfare-groups-into-conflict-20160721-gqadyg.html">Proponents of kangaroo harvesting</a> argue it helps control numbers and the animals are killed humanely.</p>
<p>But kangaroos are shot at night, from a distance, and their heads are small. This means they can not always be killed humanely with a single shot to the brain. According to the national <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/8ae26c87-fb7c-4ddc-b5df-02039cf1483e/files/code-conduct-non-commercial.pdf">code of practice</a>, once a mother has been shot, joeys should be killed by decapitation or a blow to the head.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/riding-on-the-kangaroos-back-animal-skin-fashion-exports-and-ethical-trade-130207">Riding on the kangaroo's back: animal skin fashion, exports and ethical trade</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The sale of kangaroo leather <a href="https://academic.oup.com/af/article/4/4/38/4638811">boosts the value</a> of the animal and has long been considered the <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/node/16678">backbone of the industry</a>. The leather is sold at a premium for use in leather clothing and footballs.</p>
<p>The meat, meanwhile, is often used <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-10-02/kangaroo-pet-food-trial-becomes-permanent/11564246">in Australia as pet food</a> or <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-41227521">sold at low prices to export markets</a>.</p>
<p>Similarly, <a href="https://macaulay.webarchive.hutton.ac.uk/livestocksystems/feasibility/ostrich.htm">research shows</a> the market for hide drives the ostrich farming industry in South Africa. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314388/original/file-20200210-52351-lrh82x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314388/original/file-20200210-52351-lrh82x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314388/original/file-20200210-52351-lrh82x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314388/original/file-20200210-52351-lrh82x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314388/original/file-20200210-52351-lrh82x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314388/original/file-20200210-52351-lrh82x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314388/original/file-20200210-52351-lrh82x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Luxurious calfskin comes from newborn calves, and sometimes even from calf fetuses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the beef industry, all byproducts <a href="https://www.fb.org/market-intel/tariffs-hit-the-hide-market">add to the overall value</a> of the animal, and hides comprise the biggest share.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/09/25/ban-fur-then-why-not-leather/bringing-attention-to-the-fur-industry">And as has been reported</a>, luxuriously soft calfskin is not necessarily a byproduct of the beef industry – it can come from newborn calves or even <a href="https://www.chichesterinc.com/CalfSkinsUnborn.htm">calf fetuses</a>. </p>
<h2>The animal welfare picture</h2>
<p>Cow leather produced in Australia is subject to state laws and codes regulating animal welfare, transport and slaughter.</p>
<p>These guidelines <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-02/video-footage-reveals-alleged-cruelty-at-illegal-slaughterhouse/11375854">don’t always stop</a> the abuse of animals at slaughterhouses. However overseas, the laws can be even more lax. </p>
<p>China has <a href="https://www.policyforum.net/tackling-animal-cruelty-china/">almost no laws</a> preventing animal cruelty, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/31/dog-cat-leather-china-us-congress-trade-peta">investigations have revealed</a> dogs being slaughtered and exported to the United States as traditional leather. </p>
<p>To Hindus in India, cows are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/the-splainer-what-makes-the-cow-sacred-to-hindus/2015/11/05/acdde3e2-840c-11e5-8bd2-680fff868306_story.html">considered sacred</a>. But an estimated 1.5 million cows a year are <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/nothings-sacred-the-illegal-trade-in-indias-holy-cows-7808483.html">smuggled into</a> neighbouring Bangladesh <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8-IeuG4jLw">to be slaughtered</a>, often in rudimentary conditions. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-weird-and-wonderful-ways-nature-is-being-harnessed-to-build-a-sustainable-fashion-industry-119840">Five weird and wonderful ways nature is being harnessed to build a sustainable fashion industry</a>
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<p>However it should be noted that <a href="https://theconversation.com/banning-exotic-leather-in-fashion-hurts-snakes-and-crocodiles-in-the-long-run-114173">some academics</a> say the leather industry can benefit some animal species. Their research shows that using exotic animals such as crocodiles, lizards and snakes for their skins gives those species a financial value. This drives local efforts to conserve habitat and prevents the animals from being harvested to extinction.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314886/original/file-20200212-61929-15jhwd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314886/original/file-20200212-61929-15jhwd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314886/original/file-20200212-61929-15jhwd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314886/original/file-20200212-61929-15jhwd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314886/original/file-20200212-61929-15jhwd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314886/original/file-20200212-61929-15jhwd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314886/original/file-20200212-61929-15jhwd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indonesians gather after a crocodile killing spree in 2018. Some researchers say the animal hide trade can help conserve a species.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Environmental and social harms</h2>
<p>Leather production – and its negative side effects – is concentrated <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/leather-industry">in developing countries</a>, which raises a new lot of ethical questions.</p>
<p>Turning the skin of an animal into leather is chemically-intensive and polluting.</p>
<p>For example in Hazaribagh, a leather producing region in Bangladesh, untreated waste from leather tanneries <a href="https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/bangladesh-toxic-tannerie">reportedly runs through</a> open canals while inside the tanneries the work is dangerous and child labor is common.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://msi.higg.org/page/learn-more">Higg Materials Sustainability Index</a>, measures the environmental sustainability of materials used in garment production. In 2017, cow leather received the <a href="http://globalfashionagenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Pulse-of-the-Fashion-Industry_2017.pdf">worst ranking</a> of any material. </p>
<h2>Is faux leather the answer?</h2>
<p>The market has responded to some people’s aversion to leather. Vegan fashionista Stella McCartney uses “vegetarian leather” which is actually recycled polyester. She claims this <a href="https://www.stellamccartney.com/experience/us/sustainability/themes/materials-and-innovation/vegetarian-leather/">“creates 24 times less of an environmental impact”</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sustainable-shopping-how-to-rock-white-sneakers-without-eco-guilt-85989">Sustainable shopping: how to rock white sneakers without eco-guilt</a>
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</em>
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<p>Among participants at the <a href="https://www.copenhagenfashionsummit.com">Copenhagen Fashion Summit</a>, a leading business event promoting sustainable fashion, it seems to be an article of faith that faux, synthetic or lab-produced leather is better for the environment.</p>
<p>But of course, the production of faux leather uses more energy than simply using the shoes and bags already in our wardrobes. </p>
<h2>A personal choice</h2>
<p>If you really love wearing leather but have animal welfare concerns, you might buy it second-hand. I’ve not gone down that path, because I believe wearing any leather normalises the practice. </p>
<p>There are signs public attitudes to leather are changing. In the United States for example, consumers are eating more beef but <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-18/america-is-obsessed-with-beef-but-it-has-no-use-for-hides-so-leather-prices-plunge">leather demand has recently dropped</a> – a change attributed to <a href="https://www.peta.org/living/personal-care-fashion/vegan-eco-clothing-belongs-in-your-closet/">synthetic alternatives</a> and changing fashion tastes.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the decision whether to wear leather is a personal one. But before you buy your next leather product, do your research and consider whether your purchase might contribute to the animal welfare problem.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127322/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siobhan O'Sullivan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Leather isn’t just a by-product of the meat industry, and raises serious moral questions for anyone who cares about animal rights.Siobhan O'Sullivan, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1021692018-08-30T18:54:22Z2018-08-30T18:54:22ZFriday essay: the art of the colonial kangaroo hunt<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233995/original/file-20180829-86147-rn0p9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">S.T. Gill, Kangaroo Hunting, The Death, from his Australian Sketchbook (1865). Colonial hunting clubs were established across Australia in the 1830s and 1840s.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the beginnings of settler occupation in Australia, the kangaroo has been claimed at once as a national symbol and as a type of vermin to be destroyed en masse. In Kate Clere McIntyre and Michael McIntyre’s recent award-winning film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6674514/">Kangaroo: A Love Hate Story</a>, Sydney academic Peter Chen sums up this stark contradiction: “Kangaroos are wonderful, fuzzy, they’re maternal, and they’re also a pest that should be eliminated wholesale”.</p>
<p>The killing of kangaroos by Europeans began at exactly the same time that the species was first identified. Shooting, naming, describing, scientifically classifying, sketching, dissecting, eating: these things all played out simultaneously as soon as Cook’s <em>Endeavour</em> got stranded on a reef in far north Queensland in June and July 1770.</p>
<p>Lieutenant John Gore was the first to shoot a kangaroo; Cook noted that Aboriginal people called this animal “Kangooroo, or Kanguru”; the ship’s artist Sydney Parkinson produced two beautiful sketches of these creatures; and Joseph Banks went ashore to hunt with his greyhound and “dress’d” a kangaroo for his dinner.</p>
<p>Bits and pieces of dead kangaroos were shipped back to England, where Banks presented them to George Stubbs, an artist famous for his anatomical accuracy – and who had made his name as a painter of thoroughbred horses and hunting scenes. Stubbs worked with a stuffed or inflated pelt and drew on Parkinson’s sketches to produce the first painting of this newly-identified species, Portrait of the Kongouro from New Holland (1770).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233813/original/file-20180828-75978-1d2effe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233813/original/file-20180828-75978-1d2effe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233813/original/file-20180828-75978-1d2effe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233813/original/file-20180828-75978-1d2effe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233813/original/file-20180828-75978-1d2effe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233813/original/file-20180828-75978-1d2effe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233813/original/file-20180828-75978-1d2effe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233813/original/file-20180828-75978-1d2effe.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Stubbs, Portrait of the Kongouro from New Holland (1770).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An engraving of this painting – with the kangaroo gazing back over its shoulder (curiously? Is someone pursuing it?) – was used to illustrate the bestselling 1773 publication of Cook’s journal. As Des Cowley and Brian Hubber <a href="http://www3.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-66/t1-g-t2.html">have noted</a>, further engravings were made, the image began to circulate, and soon “the kangaroo had entered the European popular imagination”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233814/original/file-20180828-75984-kdheo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233814/original/file-20180828-75984-kdheo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233814/original/file-20180828-75984-kdheo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233814/original/file-20180828-75984-kdheo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233814/original/file-20180828-75984-kdheo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233814/original/file-20180828-75984-kdheo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233814/original/file-20180828-75984-kdheo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233814/original/file-20180828-75984-kdheo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Lycett, Aborigines using fire to hunt kangaroo (c.1817).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The kangaroo hunt quickly became a recognisable genre in colonial Australian art. Joseph Lycett was transported to New South Wales in 1813, a convicted forger. His Aborigines using fire to hunt kangaroo (c. 1817) and Aborigines hunting kangaroos (1820) give us two early examples of “ethnographic” landscape painting where Aboriginal people hunt kangaroos in a fantasy precolonial space untouched by the impact of European settlement.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233824/original/file-20180828-75972-1endte4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233824/original/file-20180828-75972-1endte4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233824/original/file-20180828-75972-1endte4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233824/original/file-20180828-75972-1endte4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233824/original/file-20180828-75972-1endte4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233824/original/file-20180828-75972-1endte4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233824/original/file-20180828-75972-1endte4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233824/original/file-20180828-75972-1endte4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Lycett, Aborigines hunting kangaroos (1820)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In other works, however, Lycett placed Aboriginal hunters alongside settlers as mutual participants in the developing social and economic life of the colony. In these early days of settlement, kangaroos were a vital food source. </p>
<p>Lycett’s Inner View of Newcastle (1818) depicts a settler, a convict and an Aboriginal man walking in single file with four kangaroo dogs (usually, greyhound, deerhound and wolfhound crossbreeds); the convict is carrying the carcass of a freshly killed kangaroo over his shoulder.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233815/original/file-20180828-75990-1cg8xyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233815/original/file-20180828-75990-1cg8xyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233815/original/file-20180828-75990-1cg8xyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233815/original/file-20180828-75990-1cg8xyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233815/original/file-20180828-75990-1cg8xyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233815/original/file-20180828-75990-1cg8xyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233815/original/file-20180828-75990-1cg8xyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233815/original/file-20180828-75990-1cg8xyh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Lycett, Inner View of Newcastle (1818).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Newcastle Art Gallery.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lycett’s View on the Wingeecarrabee River, New South Wales (1824) takes us down to the Southern Highlands, inland from Wollongong – where a settler with a musket, an Aboriginal man with a spear and two kangaroo dogs are all chasing down a single kangaroo.</p>
<p>Augustus Earle was a freelance professional artist who had travelled around the world – with Charles Darwin, among others. He spent two and a half years in Australia in the mid-1820s, chronicling metropolitan and bush scenes. His painting A Bivouac of Travellers in Australia in a Cabbage Tree Forest, Day Break (1827) gives us an idyllic scene of Aboriginal and settler companionship in the wake of a kangaroo hunt. </p>
<p>A group of settlers and two Aboriginal men are arranged around a campfire, waking up, preparing breakfast, and tending to a horse. There are two kangaroo dogs curled up and sleeping, and in the foreground of the painting – in the shadows, lying beside a rifle – is a large, dead kangaroo.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233816/original/file-20180828-75999-oq5q7u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233816/original/file-20180828-75999-oq5q7u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233816/original/file-20180828-75999-oq5q7u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233816/original/file-20180828-75999-oq5q7u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233816/original/file-20180828-75999-oq5q7u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233816/original/file-20180828-75999-oq5q7u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233816/original/file-20180828-75999-oq5q7u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233816/original/file-20180828-75999-oq5q7u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Augustus Earle, A Bivouac of Travellers in Australia in a Cabbage Tree Forest, Day Break (1827).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hunting clubs</h2>
<p>S. T. Gill is probably the best known local artist to represent the kangaroo hunt as an organized recreational event. Colonial hunting clubs were established across Australia in the 1830s and 1840s; the first “meet” in Victoria, for example, was in 1839, organized near Geelong by the Indian-born military officer and pastoralist William Mercer. Squatters bred packs of hounds and wealthy locals and visiting dignitaries would be invited to join in the hunt and all the social occasions that went with it.</p>
<p><a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/fyans-foster-2075">Foster Fyans</a> was the Police Magistrate of Geelong and helped to oversee the dispossession of Aboriginal people across the western district frontier. “A noble pack of hounds was kept up by gentlemen squatters who met every season”, he recalled much later on, “hunting twice and thrice a week, and meeting at each other’s houses, where good cheer and good and happy society were ever to be met”.</p>
<p>Kangaroo hunting helped to consolidate squatter power and influence, lending it an available rhetoric of pleasure and merriment. No longer dependent on the kangaroo as a source of food, landowning colonists soon learned how to enjoy the thrill of the chase and the kill for its own sake, as a blood sport that came to define their social world.</p>
<p>Gill was a prolific chronicler of colonial life; his Australian Sketchbook (1865) included one scene, Kangaroo Stalking, in which a settler with a gun and an Aboriginal man hunt kangaroos together. In 1858 he produced a series of three lithographs under the general title Kangaroo Hunting. The first, The Meet, shows a gathering of men outside a rustic colonial homestead, with their horses and dogs (and some chickens; and a magpie on the roof). One of them has the conspicuous trappings of a wealthy squatter, tall, commanding, elaborately styled in black riding boots, yellow waistcoat, and scarlet jacket.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233818/original/file-20180828-75984-1ol7580.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233818/original/file-20180828-75984-1ol7580.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233818/original/file-20180828-75984-1ol7580.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233818/original/file-20180828-75984-1ol7580.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233818/original/file-20180828-75984-1ol7580.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233818/original/file-20180828-75984-1ol7580.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233818/original/file-20180828-75984-1ol7580.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233818/original/file-20180828-75984-1ol7580.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">S.T. Gill, Kangaroo Hunting, The Meet, from his Australian Sketchbook (1865).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second, The Chase, puts the squatter into the foreground, leaping over a fallen log on his powerful white horse. The reckless excitement of the hunt is obvious as the settlers gallop across the dangerous terrain, whips raised. The dogs are chasing a kangaroo, which is retreating into the distance.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233817/original/file-20180828-75984-1ape3q7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233817/original/file-20180828-75984-1ape3q7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233817/original/file-20180828-75984-1ape3q7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233817/original/file-20180828-75984-1ape3q7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233817/original/file-20180828-75984-1ape3q7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233817/original/file-20180828-75984-1ape3q7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233817/original/file-20180828-75984-1ape3q7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">S.T. Gill Kangaroo Huntin, The Chase, from his Australian Sketchbook (1865).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the third lithograph, The Death, seals the animal’s fate. A squatter stands beside his exhausted hounds as a hunter readies his knife to take the dead kangaroo’s tail. Another hunter lifts his hat, looking back; perhaps he is greeting a group of Aboriginal people who are approaching in the background. The leader of this group – a family? – is carrying a spear; he may also be returning from a hunt. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233826/original/file-20180828-75975-o715p0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233826/original/file-20180828-75975-o715p0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233826/original/file-20180828-75975-o715p0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233826/original/file-20180828-75975-o715p0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233826/original/file-20180828-75975-o715p0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233826/original/file-20180828-75975-o715p0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233826/original/file-20180828-75975-o715p0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233826/original/file-20180828-75975-o715p0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">S.T. Gill, Kangaroo Hunting, The Death, from his Australian Sketchbook (1865).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is no sense of impending frontier violence here, but the lithograph does seem to register the differences between settler and Aboriginal relationships to the body of the dead kangaroo: who claims possession of it, and for what purpose.</p>
<h2>Settler triumph</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233994/original/file-20180829-86129-1hz81bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233994/original/file-20180829-86129-1hz81bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233994/original/file-20180829-86129-1hz81bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233994/original/file-20180829-86129-1hz81bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233994/original/file-20180829-86129-1hz81bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233994/original/file-20180829-86129-1hz81bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233994/original/file-20180829-86129-1hz81bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233994/original/file-20180829-86129-1hz81bo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait of Charles Darwin in the 1830s by George Richmond: he tried his hand at kangaroo hunting.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many notable visitors participated in organized kangaroo hunts: Charles Darwin in 1836 (“my usual ill-fortune in sporting followed us”), Britain’s Admiral of the Fleet Henry Keppel in 1850, the novelist Anthony Trollope in 1871. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233834/original/file-20180828-75990-wdq0tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233834/original/file-20180828-75990-wdq0tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233834/original/file-20180828-75990-wdq0tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233834/original/file-20180828-75990-wdq0tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233834/original/file-20180828-75990-wdq0tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233834/original/file-20180828-75990-wdq0tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233834/original/file-20180828-75990-wdq0tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233834/original/file-20180828-75990-wdq0tg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, shot about 30 kangaroos trapped in a yard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Duke of Edinburgh came to the colonies in 1867 – <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/edinburgh-duke-of-3467">the first royal visit</a> – hunting kangaroo in South Australia and then travelling out to Victoria’s western district for more sport.</p>
<p>The Russian-born colonial artist Nicholas Chevalier accompanied him on tour, staying at the squatter John Moffat’s luxurious homestead Chatsworth House at Hopkins Hill, where he sketched a number of hunting scenes. The Duke himself shot at close range over 30 kangaroos trapped in a yard; he got the locals to preserve the skins and claws.</p>
<p>A few years earlier, Chevalier had joined an expedition to the Grampians, producing two significant landscapes. <a href="http://www.hamiltongallery.org/collection/detail.asp?Artist_LastName=c&Artist_Name=Nicholas+Chevalier&AccNumber=2004.058">Mount Abrupt</a> (1864) shows an Aboriginal family peacefully camping on a plateau above a gully, with cattle grazing on the pastures behind and the mountain in the background. This family is not (yet) dispossessed from what is clearly settler property.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234026/original/file-20180829-195301-qkbpcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234026/original/file-20180829-195301-qkbpcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234026/original/file-20180829-195301-qkbpcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234026/original/file-20180829-195301-qkbpcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234026/original/file-20180829-195301-qkbpcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234026/original/file-20180829-195301-qkbpcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234026/original/file-20180829-195301-qkbpcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234026/original/file-20180829-195301-qkbpcy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nicholas Chevalier, Mount Abrupt (1864).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hamilton Art Gallery, purchased by Hamilton Art Gallery Trust Fund - M.L Foster Endowment with assistance from the Friends of Hamilton Art Gallery.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mount Abrupt and The Grampians – produced the same year and published as a lithograph in Charles Troedel’s The Melbourne Album – gives us the same perspective of this mountain. But now there is no Aboriginal family. Instead, a group of settler hunters and their hounds ride roughshod over the place this family had once occupied, chasing kangaroos. It is as if the hunt itself has erased any trace of Aboriginal occupation of land. Its depiction is an expression of settler triumph over both native species (the kangaroo will surely be killed) and Indigeneity (Aboriginal people have been dispossessed).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233829/original/file-20180828-75984-ekt33l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233829/original/file-20180828-75984-ekt33l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233829/original/file-20180828-75984-ekt33l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233829/original/file-20180828-75984-ekt33l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233829/original/file-20180828-75984-ekt33l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233829/original/file-20180828-75984-ekt33l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233829/original/file-20180828-75984-ekt33l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233829/original/file-20180828-75984-ekt33l.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nicholas Chevalier, Mount Abrupt and The Grampians (1864).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Godfrey Mundy was another officer who had served in colonial India. He came to Australia in 1846, where he held a senior role in colonial military administration. He was also the cousin of Sir Charles Fitzroy, who by this time was Governor of New South Wales. Together, they went across the Blue Mountains on a month-long journey that became the basis for Mundy’s bestselling diary and narrative of colonial development, Our Antipodes (1852).</p>
<p>Mundy also illustrated his book; one of the illustrations is titled Hunting the Kangaroo. Here, two hunters are in hot pursuit of a kangaroo, with their hounds leading the way. One of the hounds has the kangaroo by the throat; the other lies injured at its feet. Interestingly, Mundy depicts himself as one of the hunters, with his initials “G.M.” branded on the shoulder of one of the horses.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233831/original/file-20180828-75975-1j4qvjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233831/original/file-20180828-75975-1j4qvjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233831/original/file-20180828-75975-1j4qvjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233831/original/file-20180828-75975-1j4qvjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233831/original/file-20180828-75975-1j4qvjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233831/original/file-20180828-75975-1j4qvjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233831/original/file-20180828-75975-1j4qvjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233831/original/file-20180828-75975-1j4qvjc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Godfrey Mundy, Hunting the Kangaroo (1852).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Our Antipodes.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On 30 November 1846, Mundy writes, “the resident gentlemen of the vicinity…attempt to show [us] the sport, par excellence, of the country”. But they find only one kangaroo, which eludes them. The landscape makes the kangaroo hunt difficult and dangerous, with uneven ground, tree stumps, and so on. Mundy rides “at full speed into the fork of a fallen tree” and has to “retreat”. But in his sketch, he is still proudly mounted on his horse and in full pursuit; and the kangaroo is about to die. This is the kangaroo hunt sketch as wish-fulfilment, a fantasy conclusion.</p>
<h2>Sympathy for the kangaroo</h2>
<p>Edward Roper was a keen naturalist and artist who travelled around the world, coming to Australia in 1857. His landscape A Kangaroo Hunt under Mount Zero, the Grampians (1880) has four hunters galloping through a woodland of eucalypts and grass trees, chasing three kangaroos. A long brushwood fence separates the hunters from their quarry. The riders and their hounds are approaching the fence at break-neck speed, highlighting the thrills and dangers of the chase; this is their land now, and they ride across it as a post-frontier expression of settler freedom and exhilaration.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233830/original/file-20180828-75978-1u4vii6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233830/original/file-20180828-75978-1u4vii6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233830/original/file-20180828-75978-1u4vii6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233830/original/file-20180828-75978-1u4vii6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233830/original/file-20180828-75978-1u4vii6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233830/original/file-20180828-75978-1u4vii6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233830/original/file-20180828-75978-1u4vii6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233830/original/file-20180828-75978-1u4vii6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Roper, A Kangaroo Hunt under Mount Zero, the Grampians (1880).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Roper’s <a href="https://benallacollectionlab.com/2018/02/18/edward-roper/">After the Flying Doe</a> gives us a similar scene, although with a closer view of everything including Mount Zero, which now looms large in the background. There is no fence in this version: two hunters on horseback are pursuing kangaroos, with a couple of hounds racing along in front.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233823/original/file-20180828-75993-10hcrmr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233823/original/file-20180828-75993-10hcrmr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233823/original/file-20180828-75993-10hcrmr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233823/original/file-20180828-75993-10hcrmr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233823/original/file-20180828-75993-10hcrmr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=292&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233823/original/file-20180828-75993-10hcrmr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233823/original/file-20180828-75993-10hcrmr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233823/original/file-20180828-75993-10hcrmr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Edward Roper, After the Flying Doe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Benalla Art Gallery. Source: Ledger Gift, 1985.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unusually, the kangaroos themselves are in the foreground of the painting. The “doe’s” femininity is apparent in the delicate representation of her features, and possibly there is a joey peeking from her pouch. It looks like this painting wants to invite some sympathy for the female kangaroo’s plight by placing her in the foreground, emphasizing her gender and invoking her directly in the title.</p>
<p>What happens when male hunters kill a female kangaroo? “Colonial Hunt” is the first poem published in Australia on an Australian topic; it appeared in the Sydney Gazette in June 1805. Here, a female kangaroo (“Kanguroo”) is pursued and trapped by a hunter and his dog. “Fatigu’d, broken hearted, tears gush from her eyes”, the poet writes, as she realizes her fate.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234012/original/file-20180829-86129-5zpmmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234012/original/file-20180829-86129-5zpmmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234012/original/file-20180829-86129-5zpmmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234012/original/file-20180829-86129-5zpmmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234012/original/file-20180829-86129-5zpmmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234012/original/file-20180829-86129-5zpmmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234012/original/file-20180829-86129-5zpmmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234012/original/file-20180829-86129-5zpmmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>The kangaroo that weeps when it dies offers a rare moment of sentimental identification with a native species that by 1805 is already a target for extermination. We don’t see kangaroo tears again until Ethel C. Pedley’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6434489-dot-and-the-kangaroo">Dot and the Kangaroo</a> (1902). In this famous children’s story, a female kangaroo’s sadness over the ecological toll of settlement is now shared by all native species: “Every creature in the bush weeps”, she says, “that they should have come to take the beautiful bush away from us”.</p>
<p>Organised hunts could kill any number of kangaroos; alongside hunting meets that pursued individual roos as game, squatters also organised large scale drives or battues, which could see thousands of kangaroos rounded up, slaughtered and left to rot. </p>
<p>Kangaroos are no longer hunted on horseback, of course. But small - and large -scale killing continues unabated. Recently, the New South Wales government <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-08-08/kangaroo-protections-relaxed-by-nsw-in-100pc-drought-conditions/10088614">relaxed kangaroo culling licences</a>, consistent with the view of the kangaroo as a “pest” that competes with livestock for survival in drought conditions. If we add this to that government’s plan to expand and intensify forest logging, it’s easy to sympathise with the kangaroo’s complaint in Pedley’s turn-of-the century fantasy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102169/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ken Gelder receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachael Weaver receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>In the mid 19th century, kangaroo hunting was a sport. Colonial hunting clubs were established across Australia and everyone from Charles Darwin to Anthony Trollope tried their hand at shooting roos.Ken Gelder, Professor of English, The University of MelbourneRachael Weaver, ARC Senior Research Fellow in English, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/962722018-05-13T20:30:20Z2018-05-13T20:30:20ZIs that selfie really worth it? Why face time with wild animals is a bad idea<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218555/original/file-20180511-4803-1ryd77f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kangaroos probably don't enjoy social media photos as much as we do.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The phenomenon of kangaroo selfies hit the headlines earlier this month, when several tourists were injured while feeding wild kangaroos in Lake Macquarie, north of Sydney. They may have wanted a memorable holiday snap, but ended up with rather more than they bargained for.</p>
<p>One <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-02/agro-kangaroos-addicted-to-carrots-attack-tourists/9716612">news report</a> described how the “cute and cuddly” animals had begun “viciously attacking people”. </p>
<p>Is that really fair on the kangaroos? Of all the adjectives you could use to describe an animal that is territorial, fiercely maternal and has large claws, “cuddly” is pretty far down the list.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tinders-tiger-selfies-show-the-perils-of-wildlife-close-encounters-30083">Tinder's tiger selfies show the perils of wildlife close encounters</a>
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<p>The problem with that description of the incident is that it suggests that the kangaroos were to blame for the injuries. In reality, it was the fault of the people getting too close and offering them the wrong food. Having become so used to being handed carrots, we can hardly blame the kangaroos for being “hopped up”, as the news coverage punningly put it.</p>
<p>In India, another recent case ended in tragedy when a man attempted to take a selfie with a <a href="http://www.fox13news.com/news/man-tries-to-take-selfie-with-bear-bear-kills-him">bear</a>. The man reportedly turned his back on the bear and was then mauled to death.</p>
<h2>Selfie society</h2>
<p>The growing danger of animal selfies, and of feeding wild animals, is well documented. People have been killed and injured by tigers, such as in the case of a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-503529/Tigers-maul-tourist-death-tries-photo-zoo-cage-bars.html">zoo visitor in India who climbed over a safety barrier</a> in search of a better photo. Wild long-tailed macaques at Bali’s Uluwatu Temple have got so used to being fed that they <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2132748-monkey-mafia-steal-your-stuff-then-sell-it-back-for-a-cracker/">steal tourists’ valuables</a> and only drop them when given snacks.</p>
<p>A 2016 <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jtm/article/23/2/tav026/2580644">study</a> in the Journal of Travel Medicine recommended that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>…scenarios where selfies should be avoided include photographs taken from a height, on a bridge, in the vicinity of vehicular traffic, during thunderstorms, at sporting events, and where wild animals are in the background.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Interacting with wild animals isn’t just dangerous for people. It can be bad news for the animals too. A 2017 <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-55574-4_14">study</a> looked specifically at kangaroos who are exposed to wildlife tours. It concluded that both wild and captive kangaroos can be stressed by humans approaching them closely, and that the presence of tourists may drive them away from feeding, breeding or resting areas. It also noted that the potential knock-on effects for kangaroo population numbers are still unknown. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517701000802">review in the journal Tourism Management</a>, written after a nine-year-old boy was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/may/01/patrickbarkham">killed by dingoes on Queensland’s Fraser Island in 2001</a>, confirmed that routinely feeding wild animals can alter their behaviour patterns and population levels. There was no suggestion that the boy was engaging in risky behaviour, but rather that the dingoes had become dangerously habituated to human presence, as a result of previous feeding by tourists and easy access to campsite food. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218557/original/file-20180511-34024-d0udq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218557/original/file-20180511-34024-d0udq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/218557/original/file-20180511-34024-d0udq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218557/original/file-20180511-34024-d0udq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218557/original/file-20180511-34024-d0udq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218557/original/file-20180511-34024-d0udq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218557/original/file-20180511-34024-d0udq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/218557/original/file-20180511-34024-d0udq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=556&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Advice to stay a safe distance from wild animals is all too often ignored.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>You might shake your head in disbelief at the idea of turning your back on a wild bear in search of the perfect selfie. But how many of you have taken a photo with an animal and posted it on social media? </p>
<p>These photographs, even if they are of habituated animals in urban areas or in a zoo, can endanger wild animals and cause them undue stress (as discussed in a previous <a href="https://theconversation.com/even-scientists-take-selfies-with-wild-animals-heres-why-they-shouldnt-61252">article</a>). Taking a selfie of a zoo animal can leave the impression that kangaroos, koalas and other “fluffy” animals act like this in the wild. People who don’t know about the normal behaviour of these animals may therefore think that these animals are OK to approach in the wild. This could explain why so many tourists still consider it safe to approach wild kangaroos.</p>
<p>While some wild animals are undoubtedly cute, we should be sensible enough not to expect them to be cuddly. We need to respect wild animals’ behaviour and territories, so as to avoid injury and live in harmony.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/even-scientists-take-selfies-with-wild-animals-heres-why-they-shouldnt-61252">Even scientists take selfies with wild animals. Here's why they shouldn't.</a>
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<p>Zoos in Australia generally house hand-reared animals, many of which are used to being fed and petted by people in a safe and monitored environment. The animals are given carefully selected diets, as well as places to which they can retreat if they have had enough interaction. All of this helps to minimise the stress on the animals and the risk to people. And of course, there is the broader point that zoo animals deserve respect and are not just cuddly toys.</p>
<p>Just because you can pat and feed a kangaroo at a zoo, does not mean you can do it elsewhere. Zoos can play their part by promoting advice about safe behaviour around wild animals elsewhere. </p>
<p>So next time you’re lucky enough to see kangaroos or another animal in the wild, by all means take a photo - if you can do it from a safe distance. And ask yourself whether you really need to be in it too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96272/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Teare Ada Lambert does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Here’s some advice on taking selfies with wild animals: don’t. It’s not fun for the animal, and can have serious knock-on effects for their health. And you could be injured (or worse).Kathryn Teare Ada Lambert, Adjunct Lecturer/ Ecologist, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/824172017-09-04T13:50:08Z2017-09-04T13:50:08ZHow animal genes go into battle to dominate their offspring<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183840/original/file-20170829-6710-pwups5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">She'll be more like me than you.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>The burdens of becoming parents are often shared unequally between male and female animals. This is particularly true of species that give birth to live young, where male duties such as defending the breeding territory and building dens or nests rarely compare with the ordeals of pregnancy and labour. </p>
<p>You might have thought that animals just “accept” this imbalance and get on with it. But actually, they compete over how much each parent contributes. This isn’t like the competition to win a mate, with locking horns or displays of plumage. Instead this remarkable battle takes place at the level of the genes. </p>
<p>It now appears it may have evolved very early in animal evolution, perhaps among the first child-bearing animals. What is more, it may even help to explain why animals diversified into different lineages. </p>
<h2>Creatures great and small</h2>
<p>One arena in which this battle plays out is over the size of offspring. In principle it’s in both a mother’s and father’s interests to produce bigger newborns, since they are more likely to prevail in the struggle for food and survival. </p>
<p>Yet live-bearing females are more likely to die giving birth to larger offspring or become unable to reproduce again. Their mates needn’t care – unless they are likely to sire more broods together, as with humans and certain gibbons, wolves and mice. Otherwise, the males’ only concern is that their mate invests as much as possible in the offspring they produce together. </p>
<p>This common conflict of interests <a href="https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/14/3/301/255814/Should-young-ever-be-better-off-with-one-parent">manifests</a> itself in <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3677005?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">various ways</a> in nature. Males often desert pregnant females – from <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2535784/">birds</a> to humans, for example – thereby leaving them with the burden of bringing up the young. More rarely, in some normally biparental species females desert males. We see this in some <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9449">beetles</a>, for example.</p>
<p>The genetic battle mentioned previously is another manifestation of this conflict. The males of many species <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1997210">can manipulate</a> the genes that they pass on to their offspring so that they induce extra growth at the expense of the mother. As with desertion, this effectively hands the female a greater share of the child-bearing burden than is in her interests. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183842/original/file-20170829-6691-kt09h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183842/original/file-20170829-6691-kt09h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183842/original/file-20170829-6691-kt09h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183842/original/file-20170829-6691-kt09h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183842/original/file-20170829-6691-kt09h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183842/original/file-20170829-6691-kt09h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183842/original/file-20170829-6691-kt09h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183842/original/file-20170829-6691-kt09h4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wallaby tonight?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixnio.com/fauna-animals/rats-mice-and-voles-pictures/deer-mouse-animal-peromyscus-maniculatus">Susan Freeman</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It works as follows. When an embryo grows inside its mother, it consumes resources from her, signalling its metabolic needs along the way. These signals are influenced by certain hormones which either come from the growth genes of the mother or father. The males manipulate the females to deliver more resources by increasing the extent to which these hormones are produced through a chemical modification of their growth genes during sperm formation. </p>
<p>Females have evolved mechanisms to resist this. They can, for instance, pass on to their offspring what is known as a “silenced copy” of their own growth gene. This can counterbalance the male genes’ influence by making the embryo grow less than it otherwise would. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183843/original/file-20170829-7186-ut0sza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183843/original/file-20170829-7186-ut0sza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183843/original/file-20170829-7186-ut0sza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183843/original/file-20170829-7186-ut0sza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183843/original/file-20170829-7186-ut0sza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183843/original/file-20170829-7186-ut0sza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183843/original/file-20170829-7186-ut0sza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183843/original/file-20170829-7186-ut0sza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cells dividing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/human-animal-cells-on-colorful-background-329634500?src=PmIaXm5fWSUa9ID3Y_GSRw-1-51">Kateryna Kon</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This battle is far less prevalent in truly monogamous species, including humans. This goes back to the fact that it becomes less genetically necessary where the two parents have a common interest in the female producing more offspring in future. </p>
<h2>Mouse control</h2>
<p>British microbiologist David Haig <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12728278">first proposed</a> in 2003 that this battle was more likely in organisms where one sex disproportionately contributes to the offspring, such as live-bearing species, particularly polygamous ones. This was used to explain the puzzling size of the offspring of crosses between oldfield mice and deer mice. </p>
<p>Separately, these species produce similar sized offspring. Yet crosses between male deer mice and female oldfield mice produce offspring that are larger, while the offspring from female deer mice and oldfield males are smaller. <a href="http://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Peromyscus_polionotus/">Oldfield mice</a> are monogamous while <a href="http://www.esf.edu/aec/adks/mammals/deer_mouse.htm">deer mice</a> are polyandrous, meaning one female mates with several males. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183841/original/file-20170829-6675-tjluy0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183841/original/file-20170829-6675-tjluy0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183841/original/file-20170829-6675-tjluy0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183841/original/file-20170829-6675-tjluy0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183841/original/file-20170829-6675-tjluy0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183841/original/file-20170829-6675-tjluy0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183841/original/file-20170829-6675-tjluy0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/183841/original/file-20170829-6675-tjluy0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The deer mouse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixnio.com/fauna-animals/rats-mice-and-voles-pictures/deer-mouse-animal-peromyscus-maniculatus">Pixnio</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Mimicking nature by artificially manipulating a growth gene called igf2, researchers <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12728278">showed that</a> these smaller and larger offspring were due to genetics. In further support of the theory, placental mammals and marsupials including kangaroos and opossums have since been <a href="https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2164-9-205">found to</a> have signs of female resistance to such male manipulation. </p>
<p>How early did this mechanism evolve? Researchers have previously <a href="https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2164-9-205">suggested</a> it arose in live-born mammals, and would therefore be absent in egg-laying mammals – such as the platypus – and other vertibrates. </p>
<p>But that raises questions about all the reptiles, amphibians and fish which produce live young, since the same genetic manipulation would equally be in their males’ interests. To see if it was present, <a href="https://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutput/asymmetric-paternal-effect-on-offspring-size-linked-to-parentoforigin-expression-of-an-insulinlike-growth-factor(f577a130-e1eb-49c6-aafe-0f65fe7e8017).html">we looked at</a> a Mexican fish called the amarillo or dark-edged splitfin (see lead image). </p>
<p>Along with co-researchers <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yolitzi_Saldivar">Yolitzi Saldívar</a> and <a href="http://www.langebio.cinvestav.mx/?pag=365">Jean Philippe Vielle Calzada</a>, we crossed males and females from two distant populations of these fish, since they would not have evolved mechanisms which cancel one another out in the way that a single population is likely to have. Sure enough, the size of the embryos was influenced by the specific combination of father and mother. We found signs of male manipulation and probable resistance from the females. </p>
<p>Though based on a small sample size, this suggests that these mechanisms evolved much earlier than previously believed: fish split from other vertebrates some 200m years before live-bearing mammals appeared, dating back about 370m years in total. Whether it comes from a single evolution or from several in different lineages, we cannot yet tell. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184393/original/file-20170901-27276-5i8lvq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184393/original/file-20170901-27276-5i8lvq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184393/original/file-20170901-27276-5i8lvq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184393/original/file-20170901-27276-5i8lvq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184393/original/file-20170901-27276-5i8lvq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=605&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184393/original/file-20170901-27276-5i8lvq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184393/original/file-20170901-27276-5i8lvq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184393/original/file-20170901-27276-5i8lvq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=760&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Animal magic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/evolution-biology-scheme-animals-isolated-on-293178890?src=TWxd03vTyW1iwPyOGI7ZqQ-1-39">Ekaterina</a></span>
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<p>One consequence of these genetic battles is the effect on reproductive compatibility within a species. The genetic mutations aimed at manipulating offspring that take place among males and females within a certain group of a species are like a sort of arms race. The genes continually adapt and counter-adapt to one another to try and further their reproductive interests. </p>
<p>If they then mate with an animal from a different group of the same species, their genetic mutations can have made them sufficiently unmatched over time that they are unable to reproduce – thus they are now two species. If this started happening much earlier in evolution than was previously thought, it is likely to have influenced how different groups of live-born animals diverged, including lizards, sharks and mammals. From little acorns, these are the kinds of big oak trees that can grow.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Parents’ DNA try to manipulate one another in a bid to shape junior in their mould.Constantino de Jesús Macías García, Director of the Ecology Institute, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)MIchael Ritchie, Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Speciation, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.