How Kangaroos, Social Animals, Communicate with Humans

I came across an interesting study and decided to summarize it. While reading the paper, the following thoughts occurred to me.

1. Research on the intelligence of marsupials is said to be rare. Could it be because of Australia’s geographic isolation?
2. Wouldn’t the presence of sociality among members of the same species have been an essential prerequisite for domestication? It may be one of the reasons why animals such as rhinoceroses were never domesticated.
3. I’m not sure how exactly the term social should be defined, but the label can be applied to more animals than you might think. Lions, elephants, bison, wolves, and even cats!
4. If animals have the capacity for intentional communication, how should we evaluate their intelligence? At least the kangaroos in this experiment appear to be capable of understanding human cognitive abilities and of developing, on their own, ways of communicating with humans.

Among animals in the kangaroo family, the subjects of the experiment were primarily the Kangaroo Island kangaroo (a subspecies of the western grey kangaroo), along with the eastern grey kangaroo and the red kangaroo. The Kangaroo Island kangaroo is relatively friendly toward humans, but the eastern grey kangaroo and the red kangaroo are quite fierce.

Below is a summary of the article.

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A study was published reporting that kangaroos attempt interspecies communication. This is the first such case for a non-domesticated animal—at least as far as has been reported in academia.

The kangaroo is a symbol of Australia. Even so, there are quite a few Australians who would like to shoot kangaroos dead. Their numbers reach 50 million (Australia’s population is 25 million), and they damage ranches. The researchers say they hope this study will help put an end to the hatred of kangaroos in Australia.

The experiment in this study goes as follows. A kangaroo is given a food container that it cannot open on its own, and a human researcher stands beside it and watches. The kangaroo first tries to open the container, but soon realizes that doing so is impossible. The kangaroo then stands between the human and the food container, looking back and forth between the human and the container (attempting to communicate through its gaze). If the human ignores this, the kangaroo approaches the human and sniffs at their feet. If the human still ignores it, the kangaroo places a paw on the human’s knee and repeatedly looks between the human and the food container. It is similar to what a dog does.

The study speculates that, since kangaroos are originally social animals, they may be applying to humans the communication methods they use among themselves. However, the kangaroo is the only social animal (at least as far as has been reported in academia) that attempts to communicate with humans. In a similar situation, wolves do not ask humans for help. Instead, wolves tear the food container apart.

That said, this study has a limitation in that it was conducted on zoo kangaroos. This is because wild kangaroos are dangerous.

Original paper

NYT article