All items sold on this website are polyurethane resin replicas, made in USA. No real or natural bone is available on this site.
Osphranter Male Skull Replica or Red Kangaroo measures 8.1 inches. Skull is museum quality polyurethane cast. 2-part skull (separate cranium and jaw). Made in the USA. Cast of an original California Academy of Sciences specimen.
The Osphranter or Red Kangaroo breeds all year round. The females have the unusual ability to delay the birth of their baby until their previous joey has left the pouch. This is known as embryonic diapause.
Copulation may last 25 minutes. The Red Kangaroo has the typical reproductive system of a kangaroo. The neonate emerges after only 33 days. Usually only one young is born at a time.
It is blind, hairless, and only a few centimetres long. Its hind legs are mere stumps. It uses its more developed forelegs to climb its way through the thick fur on its mother’s abdomen into the pouch, which takes about three to five minutes. Once in the pouch, it fastens onto one of the two teats and starts to feed.
Almost immediately, the Osphranter or Red Kangaroo mother’s sexual cycle starts again. Another egg descends into the uterus and she becomes sexually receptive. Then, if she mates and a second egg is fertilised, its development is temporarily halted.
The neonate in the pouch grows rapidly. After approximately 190 days, the baby (called a joey) is sufficiently large and developed to make its full emergence out of the pouch, after sticking its head out for a few weeks until it eventually feels safe enough to fully emerge.
From then on, the Osphranter or Red Kangaroo joey spends increasing time in the outside world and eventually, after around 235 days, it leaves the pouch for the last time. While the young joey will permanently leave the pouch at around 235 days old, it will continue to suckle until it reaches about 12 months of age.
A doe may first reproduce as early as 18 months of age and as late as five years during drought, but normally she is two and a half years old before she begins to breed.
The female Red Kangaroo is usually permanently pregnant except on the day she gives birth. She has the ability to freeze the development of an embryo until the previous joey is able to leave the pouch. This is known as embryonic diapause, and will occur in times of drought and in areas with poor food sources.
The composition of the milk produced by the mother varies according to the needs of the joey.
Osphranter or Red Kangaroo mothers may “have up to three generations of offspring simultaneously; a young-at-foot suckling from an elongated teat, a young in the pouch attached to a second teat and a blastula in arrested development in the uterus”.
The red kangaroo has also been observed to engage in alloparental care, a behavior in which a female may adopt another female’s joey.
