SAVE OUR KANGAROOS FROM CRUELTY & EXPLOITATION

BY ANTJE STRUTHMAN

'How important is the Hierarchial Structure of Grey Kangaroos?'...........It depends on who's viewpoint!!!
The heirarchial structure IS NOT important to the Kangaroo Meat Industry and to academics or politicians.
But if you see things from our viewpoint, the heirarchial structure is very important indeed.
The best example is South Australia where they have killed for decades the kings of the mobs and the biggest females first, then the smaller sized kangaroo and the result you see now.
Whatever these South Australians are trying to achieve, they will now never get the big sized kangaroos back! The gene pool of these once large kangaroos has been destroyed ad is surely wiped out.
Without a heirarchial structure there is no "MOB", (I'll explain later). The hierarchy is there to make sure that the King's gene pool is kept alive, and the purpose of a king is to pass on "his" genes to "his" offspring and his possible heir who will be King of another mob. The social stucture of a mob includes behavioural systems for rescource exploitation (food), predator avoidance and rearing of the young.
Let me give you a quick insight to the function of a mob.
The king of a mob is replaced only when a challenger, usually an equal if not more dominant king male wins against the existing King which can take years.
The male offspring of a mob will eventually leave that mob as early as 22 months of age. These juveniles might join another mob or join an older male or stay together (boys club) but away from the mob, this is to prevent inbreeding of the young males with their mothers, sisters and half sisters.
It is the female who passes on the bloodline, so if father or King mated with his daughter it would be technically alright as they do not have the same bloodline, BUT if the son bred with his mother or sisters it is a total inbreeding and therefore is cleverly avoided when a King rules the mob.
The King's role is to pass on his genes to as many females in his mob as he can, of course there is the problem of being challenged while one of the females is in estrus and ready to be mated. If the King is occupied fighting with other males vying for his position, the chance that a younger male mates with a female in estrus is possible, (in fact she allows him to) but in a natural mob that male will most likely be an adult rather than a teenager.
The size of the mob is probably not as important as being able to pass on the King's genes to most of the mob's females, and to be able to keep the other males away from most of the females for as long as possible, to make the most of his time as king.
I have seen mobs as small as one king and one female with offspring at heel, up to a mob of 70 and to the size my own mob got to until the day my 2 young kings Gismo and Snowy got shot on 31st August 2001, which was 29 members.
All the matings I have witnessed I can truly say that the Eastern Greys in our area are the most caring and sharing and non violent animals I have ever observed. My 2 late kings even accepted a very sick male into their mob. They knew that this skinny run down male was no threat to either of them. (This 5-7 year old male and I made contact and I nicknamed him Buddy and he still comes to me today to get his freebies.)
If one female comes into season the male will follow her for 2.5-3 days, scratching her tail to find out if she is ready to mate. Often the younger males get exhausted from just following the female around everywhere. If one of my females comes into estrus and is sick and tired of being followed by the males, she jumps into her old roo yard until the boys have figured out how to get into the 'safe haven', which, for the males takes quite a while longer to figure out!! In the end it will be the older male who mates with the female, not the younger ones. As long as there is an older male around, the younger males do not stand a chance to mate with the particular female.
Young teenage females are not protected by their mothers once they become sexually mature, which can be as young as 19 months of age. The king of the mob will protect the young females from the other young bucks, however he will mate with her himself. I witnessed one of these matings and I feared the worst for this little female, but although her offspring was large, it was still smaller than the other older doe's offsprings. She had no trouble rearing the joey, and once out of pouch the joey grew quickly, catching up with the others in size.
If the mother's pouch did not stretch sufficiently to equal the joey's growth, then it could be possible the joey would suffer from overstretched Achilles tendons.
Matings can be rough if the male is young and inexperienced. King or older males matings are quite gentle, (if not being rushed or harassed by other males).
Lynda, you are on the right track placing an older male with the younger mob before relelase. This practice works better if the male could mate with the females prior to release, so he is aware of just who belongs to his mob.
He will protect his females from othe males as long as they are not stronger than himself.
My 2 boys (kings) divided into 2 groups, but stayed together as a mob. If you release a mob without a leader, who will be acting as the king of this leaderless mob?
I believe that an established mob cannot be seen by any other males as a 'mob', if it does not have a king. The king is the symbol of the mob. The king of a mob earns the respect from othe rmales and acts as a role model for the other to learn from.
One interesting aspect which I have observed is that when a lower ranking male is accepted by a female, she tends to accept the same male year after year.

To summarize, all social animals (kangaroo, deer, goat, elephant, etc.) or pack animals like wolves, geese etc., just to name a few species have a King and Queen as heads of their heirarchy. All these animals hierarchy structure is easily destroyed once the King is no longer present.

copyright - Antje Struthmann

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