What is a baby kangaroo called?
A baby kangaroo is called a joey. Joeys are born tiny, about the size of a jelly bean, and grow inside their mother's pouch for months.
After about a month of pregnancy, a newborn kangaroo crawls through its mother's fur into her pouch. There it attaches to a teat and drinks milk while it grows. A red kangaroo joey stays in the pouch for about eight months and keeps nursing for several more.
The word joey is used for the young of other marsupials too, including koalas and wombats. Marsupials are mammals that raise their young in a pouch.
Kangaroo families
Male kangaroos are called bucks, boomers or jacks, and females are does, flyers or jills. A group of kangaroos is called a mob. A mother kangaroo can have a young joey in the pouch and an older one at foot at the same time, feeding each different milk.
Did You Know?
Kangaroos cannot walk backward easily, which is one reason they appear with the emu on Australia's coat of arms, a symbol of a nation moving forward.