Herbert rock kangaroo
| Herbert rock kangaroo | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Petrogale herberti | ||||||||||||
| Thomas , 1926 |
The Herbert rock kangaroo ( Petrogale herberti ) is a species of kangaroo belonging to the rock kangaroo genus . It lives in southeast Queensland between the Fitzroy River in the north, Nanango in the south, and Clermont in the west.
features
Males reach a head body length of 50 to 61.5 cm and have a 51 to 66 cm long tail and a weight of 4.9 to 6.7 kg. The females measured so far had a head body length of 47 to 56 cm, a 48 to 57 cm long tail and a weight of 3.1 to 4.9 kg. The back is gray-brown, the belly is lighter. The face and shoulders are darker than the back. A horizontal light stripe runs along the cheeks. The limbs are brown, fore and hind feet darker than arms and legs. The rear section of the tail is slightly bushy and darker in color than the front part of the tail. In the north of the distribution area the animals are overall lighter, the tail is less bushy and the different colors of the body contrast only slightly. The diploid genome of Petrogale herberti comprises 2n = 22 chromosomes .
Habitat and way of life
The Herbert rock kangaroo lives in rocky regions and in gorges that lie in forests or in bushland. In the hot summer it is nocturnal, in the other seasons it is twilight and sometimes diurnal. On cold days, the animals sun themselves sitting on rocks in the morning before leaving the rocks to eat. Females have a single cub per year. The Herbert rock kangaroo's way of life probably corresponds to that of the brush- tailed rock kangaroo ( Petrogale pennicillata ). Details are not known.
Systematics
The Herbert rock kangaroo was first described in 1926 by the British zoologist Oldfield Thomas . For a long time it was considered a subspecies of the Queensland rock kangaroo ( P. inornata ), later the brush-tail rock kangaroo ( P. pennicillata ), with which it hybridizes in the extreme south of its range. Only in 1992 did it regain its status as an independent species. Within the genus of rock kangaroos ( Petrogale ), it belongs to the lateralis / penicillata species group.
Danger
The Herbert rock kangaroo is listed by the IUCN as Least Concern. The range is relatively large and the animals are relatively common there. There are several protected areas in the distribution area.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Mark Eldridge & Graeme Coulson: Family Macropodidae (Kangaroos and Wallabies). Page 716 in Don E. Wilson , Russell A. Mittermeier : Handbook of the Mammals of the World - Volume 5. Monotremes and Marsupials. Lynx Editions, 2015, ISBN 978-84-96553-99-6
- ↑ Petrogale herberti in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2016 Posted by: Johnson, CN & Hawkins, C., 2015. Accessed March 22, 2018th
