A man who may have been keeping a wild kangaroo as a pet was killed by the animal in southwest Australia – police reported on Tuesday, September 13.
The incident was reportedly the first fatal attack by a kangaroo in Australia since 1936. A relative found the 77-year-old man with serious injuries on his property on Sunday, September 10, in semirural Redmond.
It was believed he had been attacked earlier in the day by the kangaroo, which police shot dead because it was preventing paramedics from reaching the injured man.
The man died at the scene. Police are preparing a report for a coroner who will record an official cause of death.
The man was identified by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as Peter Eades, a local alpaca breeder. Police believe he had been keeping the wild kangaroo as a pet.
There are legal restrictions on keeping Australian native fauna as pets, but the police media office said on Tuesday that they had no information to make public regarding whether the victim had a permit.
Tanya Irwin, who cares for macro pods at the Native Animal Rescue service in Perth, said authorities rarely issue permits to keep kangaroos in Western Australia.
Western gray kangaroos are common in Australia’s southwest. They can weigh up to 120 pounds and stand over 4 feet tall. According to the Perth Zoo, they are herbivores and eat coarse grasses and some shrubs.
The males can be aggressive and fight people with the same techniques as they use with each other. They use their short upper limbs to grapple with their opponent, use their muscular tails to take their body weight, then lash out with both their powerful clawed hind legs.
In 1936, William Cruickshank, 38, died in a hospital in Hillston in New South Wales state on the Australian east coast months after he’d been attacked by a kangaroo. Also, in 2017, a kangaroo attacked a 9-year-old girl at a zoo in Alabama.
Source: Ghanafuo.com
