Whiptail Wallaby

Order: Marsupialia Family: Macropodidae Genus & Species: Macropus parryi

Habitat
The Whiptail Wallaby, also known as the 'Blue Flier' or 'Pretty-faced wallaby' is a social marsupial, often seen feeding and relaxing in groups. It lives in the open eucalyptus forests of eastern Australia. It prefers open areas and feeds mainly on the plant, aptly known as 'kangaroo grass'. The forests lie on the eastern slopes of the Great Dividing Range, a mountain chain that runs parallel to the east coast. The air there is moist from the Pacific Ocean ensuring that sufficient rain falls to sustain the vegetation. The eucalyptus trees provide cover for the wallaby, offering shade from daytime temperatures that often exceed 40^oC. Standing up to 100cm high, males can weigh in from 14-16kg and can reach up to 93cm in length. Females can weigh from 7-15kg and reach up to 75cm in length. They have a life span of up to 10 years. Their mating season is year round and they have a gestation period of 34-38 days, normally producing only 1 'joey' at a time with an interval of nine months between births. Females reach sexual maturity between 18-30 months, males at between 24-36 months.

Grooming is part of their social behaviour

Breeding
The male whiptail competes to breed with females. The females come on heat every 42 days. Once she becomes pregnant she does not mate again until her 'pouch young' is 150 - 210 days old. A newborn wallaby weighs less than a gram as it crawls from the birth canal to its mother's pouch. It stays in its mother's pouch for around eight months. The developed 'joey' leaves the pouch for good at around nine months old and remains with the mother. It is usually weaned at around 15 months old, by which time it will have learned social habits such as grooming (left).

Behaviour
The whiptail wallaby is the most social of all large marsupials. It lives in a loosely organised group, or mob, containing up to 50 individuals, many of which are related. The strongest bond in a mob is between a female and her offspring. Whereas a subadult female usually remains in the same group as her mother. A young male often leaves his natal group. The mob shares the home range throughout the year, but breaks up into smaller groups during the day for feeding. Members of one mob rarely enter a neighbouring group's territory, but even if they do, aggression is rare. Territory boundaries are instinctive and whiptails do not scent mark. Its wide field of vision helps the wallaby spot danger. The whiptail wallaby's main predator is the dingo. If alarmed, the wallaby can reach speeds of up to 48 km/h in open country and can cover up to 9 metres in a single bound.

Conservation
The whiptail wallaby is widely distributed and relatively common. In the past, it was hunted for its skin. But controls, which involve limited culling, now restrict these practices. The laws preserving some of the whiptail wallaby's native eucalyptus habitat have backed up this conservation legislation, mostly enacted at state level. And in some areas, the opening of forested land for agriculture has even increased suitable habitat.

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