Aussie police adopts abandoned baby kangaroo, video of joey jumping into cop’s T-shirt goes viral

Interspecies friendship, like the one between the old Brazilian man and a South American Magellanic penguin, is sure to invite thumbs up from the public as it tugs at heartstrings. The latest viral story of unusual friendship to develop is between an Australian policeman and an abandoned baby kangaroo.

What perhaps makes these two stories stand out is that both involved men and animals. Normally, it is women who are known to have nurturing nature, but in these two accounts, macho males – one a fisherman and another a constable – showed their paternal instincts in caring for these animals that need help.

ABC reports that the joey was brought to police officers in Western Australia. The baby kangaroo’s mother was hit and killed by a truck on Wednesday morning, according to Perth Now. Constable Scott Mason of the Cue Police station adopted the four-month-old baby kangaroo which, like a pet dog, was following him all over the police station.

But that’s not the only cute thing that the joey, whom he named Cuejo after asking for suggestions on the Cue Police Twitter page, does. A video of Cuejo jumping inside Mason’s T-shirt shows the baby kangaroo is missing his mum’s pouch but is happy to have the cop’s shirt as his substitute man-pouch.

Mason now has two babies in his hands. He explains, “Because it needs to be fed every three hours, it’s going to be my little child basically as my wife’s in Perth with our newborn.”

Cuejo was literally pulled out from the pouch of its mother which was hit by a truck. Destin Sandlin, host of popular YouTube science series, Smarter Every Day, went to Australia to discover more about the animal at a kangaroo sanctuary.

He found that male kangaroos do not have pouches, while the joey stays inside the pouch of a female kangaroo to feed and grow for about four months, after which it has grown fur and could already live outside the pouch which are not on the animal’s belly but below, just above its genitals.