This might be a really weird question, but why do Kangaroos jump instead of walk?
As a human jumping takes a lot more energy than jumping, so it must be something biological, but they are like the only animal family that does that (I’m sure there are more kangaroo-like animals I don’t know about)?
Edit – After seeing a few comments, this post isn’t about why the evolved to do so (even though it is an interesting question), I was asking what is the anatomical reasoning for it.
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Kangaroo legs are adapted so that energy from moving up and down can be transferred through the elasticity of their muscles (while using little energy themselves) into forward motion. This allows them to get to high speeds easily. You can see similar behaviours in some birds on the ground, not only in land mammals and monkeys. In conclusion, jumping is more efficient for kangaroos than walking like we do because their bone structure is different.
Also looked up kangaroo and kinda shocked by how there are multiple different [sub]species. There’s even a tree kangaroo.
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