Kangaroo personality is a thing: here’s how to study it

If you want to improve your understanding of kangaroo personality, one of the best ways to achieve this is with a remote-controlled car and some smooth jazz. Apparently.

These are the tools of choice for Weliton Menário Costa, a PhD researcher with the ANU Research School of Biology. After studying goat behaviour in his home country, Brazil, he came to Australia and spent several years studying a wild population of eastern grey kangaroos in Wilsons Promontory National Park in Victoria.

“We had to attract their attention first, so we needed an object that moved and made a little bit of noise,” he says. “We drove the remote-controlled car around for 15 seconds in front of a group so that all the individuals would see it.

“Then when they looked, they would see something they’d never seen before.”

What would a wild kangaroo think of such a mysterious whirring, rolling object?

Read the full article at the ANU College of Science website.