NEWS AND COMMENT: Peter Eades, 77, has been named as the alpaca farmer who was killed by his pet kangaroo. It is, apparently, extremely rare for a kangaroo to kill a human but kangaroos do attack humans. There are unsuited as pets when adult. And they become adult at about 18 months to 3 years of age when they turn from “beautiful, sweet lovable [animals], which is the description I would give them up to that point, [and] become wild animals” according to Michelle Jones a wildlife carer who reminded people that the death was a tragic reminder of the need to be extremely careful around adult kangaroos.
She said that “kangaroos are definitely not pets, they are wild animals. They want to spa, they want to box, and right now it’s kangaroo breeding season”.
Peter Eades was an animal lover, and he loved his alpacas. He wanted to be buried next to his favourite alpaca Claudia, who is buried in his alpaca cemetery.
On Sunday, a relative found him with serious injuries at his property which is situated 250 miles south-east of Perth. They called an ambulance but when the paramedics arrived his pet kangaroo became threatening. It is reported that the paramedics were unable to safely get to Mr Eades and therefore the police were called and the kangaroo was shot dead. Another tragic ending.
Western Australia police said: “The kangaroo was posing an ongoing threat to emergency responders”. When they got to Mr Eades he died at the scene.
The Western grey kangaroo is a big animal weighing more than 10 stone and standing over 6 feet tall. Male kangaroos compete over females in violent boxing matches, or they lock arms and try to push the other over while they lash out with their powerful hind legs.
Graham Colson, a Melbourne zoologist and an expert on kangaroo behaviour told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that attacks on humans are not uncommon but they are very rarely fatal. He said: “They are large animals; they’ve got a lot of weapons – sharp nails and sharp teeth – and certainly if they’re cornered or in some sort of distress that can be quite dangerous. They don’t distinguish between people and other kangaroos.”
Apparently, because humans are bipedal i.e., they stand up on their hind legs, kangaroos relate to humans as other kangaroos. Perhaps it was the breeding season which got this testosterone-fuelled kangaroo in the mood to compete for females and he attacked his owner on that basis.
Kangaroos attack humans in the same way that they attack one another.
The previous fatal kangaroo attack on a person was in 1936 when William Cruickshank, 38, died in a hospital in Hillston, New South Wales, after he was mauled by a kangaroo. He suffered extensive head injuries including a broken jaw. He was trying to get the kangaroo off his two dogs, and it cost him his life.
Killing kangaroos
I’m told that Australia is home to 25 million people and an estimated 50 million kangaroos. They’ve reached plague proportions according to some commenters. That’s why there are kangaroo shooters in Australia, and they do the slaughtering at night normally. The Internet tells me that in 2021 in New South Wales alone, commercial shooters killed over 40,000 kangaroos per month. The figure does not include offspring i.e., joeys because the industry doesn’t count them. And the Independent newspaper tells me that Australia plan to kill more than a million kangaroos annually. Their report is dated February 2017. In 2015 official statistics show that more than 1.5 million kangaroos were killed.
The Animals Australia website states that in many remote areas of Australia, thousands of kangaroos are grazing peacefully, and they stand up and listen to an approaching vehicle at which point they are blinded by a spotlight and then shot for their flesh and skins. There are no statistics available for the number that are wounded and escape to die slowly in the outback.
The kangaroo industry Code of Practice requires that they are killed by a single shot to the head which is a weak guideline because shooters can’t guarantee adhering to it. Conservative estimates according to the above-mentioned website suggest that more than 10,000 adult kangaroos, commercially processed annually, are not killed by a single shot to the head.
The slaughtering of Australia’s kangaroos occurs without public scrutiny. They claim that the mass slaughter is not to protect farm’s income by protecting grazing animals but that it is conducted as a commercial enterprise. They state that in 2016 1.34 million kangaroos were killed for this commercial industry.
Some of the skins and meat are used domestically and the rest are exported to other countries with two thirds going to Europe for leather and meat. Kangaroo leather is widely used in sports products such as golf clubs and shoes.
When a female kangaroo is shot by one of these commercial shooters and she’s carrying her offspring in her pouch they decapitate the joey if they’re very small or they are killed with a blow to the head. If joeys are not in the pouch and ‘on foot’ they often escape and are suddenly faced with life without their mother. They often fall victim to predators or die of starvation and exposure. The bond between mother and joey is immensely strong they say. Red kangaroos are not weaned until a year after birth. Eastern and western grey kangaroos are not weaned until they are 18 months old.
Below are some more articles on kangaroos.
