Chasing Kangaroos: A Continent, a Scientist, and a Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Creature

Here is advice from an expert: "If you ever see a fresh kangaroo carcass lying beside the road it is well worth stopping to take a closer look." The expert is Tim Flannery, a professor, explorer, and paleontologist, and he dispenses his advice, and much other eccentric and informative matter, in _Chasing Kangaroos: A Continent, a Scientist, and a Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Creature_ (Grove Press). Flannery has written plenty of books of anecdotes of travel and exploration, and also academic works about the strange mammals of his region. His current book is a combination memoir, travelogue, and appreciation of the fauna (including the humans) of the land down under, and it is delightful in all departments. Flannery takes his own advice more than once, like the time he was driving in the Northern Territory and a wallaby dashed in front of him before he could swerve. It was a "nailtail" because its whip-like tail has a sort of fingernail at the end, and no one knows why it has such a thing because no one has ever seen it put to use. Flannery took the deceased nailtail back to his camp to anatomize its leg and feet; it is not surprising that these regions give the most clues about kangaroos' evolutionary descent. He also took steaks from the haunches, and reports that the resultant stew produced a meat that tasted like steak and mushrooms and was far superior to the meat of the red kangaroo (that's the kangaroo we non-Australians think of as "the" kangaroo, although there are plenty of others in different sizes, shapes, and colors). Unfortunately, the carcass was also tasty enough for some birds of prey to steal from him overnight, so his museum never got the specimen. Flannery does not deal in just recent kills, but some that have been extinct for millions of years, like _Propleopus oscillans_, the killer kangaroo. Don't worry; the huge carnivorous beast is long extinct, but it has been the subject of some of Flannery's own research, and he goes into some detail about how he did research and came to understand its environmental role, its teeth giving clues about it's carnivorous nature. Flannery describes his scientific jubilation: "Then there were a delicious couple of days when, as I worked on my theory without telling anyone else, I was the only person on Earth who knew that great, carnivorous kangaroos once stalked Australia." Subsequent finds of skulls confirm the theory, but beyond that there is a mystery, for a single arm bone is the only other fossil remnant of the creature ever found. Another extraordinary thing about these creatures is that although they evolved in isolated islands with no hope of swimming to other lands, humans have arranged for them to populate new worlds, and kangaroos have flourished in unusual places. It is perhaps not too surprising to learn that brush-tailed rock-wallabies have done well on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. They are descendants of two who escaped from a menagerie in 1916.

Tim Flannery's "Chasing Kangaroos" is a terrific, informative read regarding what surely is one of the oddest animals in all of nature. To say the author is obsessed with his subject may not quite be true but his love for kangaroos in unabashed. Flannery's book teems with knowledge as one would guess, as he is one of the leading experts on these fascinating creatures. Anyone who has ever seen a kangaroo "hop"...and I do mean they HOP....will marvel at their overall structure and Flannery, rightly so, gives a detailed account about how they get around, beginning with the physical diversity of the feet of the many different kangaroos. Not all of the dispensed information is cute and cuddly....a description of their digestive systems is downright unappealing...but Flannery covers it all in a narrative style that is mostly well-paced. His opening recounting of a trip around Australia when he was in his teens can be a bit of a drudge and by that measure it takes a while to get into things. However, I highly recommend "Chasing Kangaroos"...it's simply a fun and educational book.

Great reading. A wonderful man. I would love to know him but enjoyed spending the time with the book.

Among the world's landforms, Australia long has been the symbol of land mismanagement. Human intrusion has changed life's diversity nearly everywhere, but the demolition of the Island Continent's ecological balance has been particularly severe. Tim Flannery, although leaving an academic career in the humanities behind without losing his sense of it, gives an account of the condition of his native land. Although city-born and bred, Flannery had a deep urge to know the rest of his country better. Biology proved the gateway to that enterprise. In this compelling account of his quest and what he's learned on the journey, he depicts Australia as it is, and likely was in ancient times. Invasion has proved a major force. The author's search began one summer with an attempt to circuit Australia by motorcycle. Beset by numerous impediments, not the least of which was of spare parts for the bike, he finally abandoned that effort. As his career developed, he participated in numerous digs and analysis of fossil finds. Through this means the author hoped to derive a picture of kangaroo ancestry. On each trip to a dig, or working at the site, new people - often providing new information - come to his ken. Part of his search has been dedicated to meeting Aborigines, learning their ways, legends and history. With their long tenure in the Australian scene - longer than that of our species in Europe - their relationship with the land and its wildlife is an invaluable contribution. As Flannery learns, however, displacement by farmers and sheepmen have driven the Aborigines from their ancestral homes while killing off many of the native species. The catalogue of those creatures, extinct and remaining, provides the North American reader with some challenges. The euro and pademelon are not, respectively, a coin and a fruit - they are marsupial mammals. The quokka, one of the first Australian species described by Europeans, also provided the revelation that most of the marsupials have the ability to delay the birth of young. In stressful times, 'roos and the rest can signal the embryo to cease developing, restarting the process when resources are more plentiful. This is but one of numerous "adjustments" Australian wildlife makes in a harsh environment. Others are due to environmental shifts caused by human intrusion. The euro, for example, able to live almost without water, repopulates areas where its larger cousins have been exterminated by hunters. They are thus fierce competitors to the ubiquitous, and profitable, sheep, adapting to the changes in environment instilled by European invaders. Australia's fossils are difficult to date. In its geological dance over the aeons, there was little volcanic activity in the Centre to provide dateable rocks. Although the world's oldest rocks, from 4.2 billion years ago are from there, younger, fossil-bearing strata must be approximately dated. Flannery's aim to build a picture of kangaroo evolution