Dusky pademelon: 'Mini kangaroo’ born at Chester Zoo
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Conservationists at Chester Zoo are celebrating the birth of a rare 'miniature kangaroo'.
Keepers got a quick glimpse of the new joey - a dusky pademelon - as it started to peek out from mum's pouch for the very first time.
The dusky pademelon is a species with a close likeness to its distant kangaroo cousin in Australia.
However, it only grows to be around two feet tall which is why the small, hopping marsupial got its 'miniature kangaroo' nickname.
They can only be found in the wild in the forests of New Guinea and some smaller nearby islands in Indonesia.
The new baby arrived to mum Styx and dad Kai.
The creature is officially listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as vulnerable to extinction and is closely monitored in the wild to ensure its long-term survival on New Guinea.
The major threats it faces are hunting and habitat loss to human rice farming and logging.
Sadly, experts say its numbers have dropped by 30% in the last two decades.
'Jelly bean'
Dusky pademelon babies begin their lives the size of a 'jelly bean' and are born after just 30 days,
They stay inside the mother's pouch while they grow and develop until they emerge almost six months later.
Megan Carpenter, lead keeper at the zoo, said: "Seeing the magical moment her new arrival took its first peek out of the pouch has brought us a huge amount of joy!
"It'll be a few weeks until the new baby fully emerges and is hopping around and exploring all by itself - that's when we'll be able to determine if it's male or female and give it a fitting name. "
Chester is currently one of just four zoos in the UK zoo caring for the species and just 56 live in zoos across the whole of Europe.
The name 'pademelon' is a native Australian term for 'small kangaroos of the forest'.
As a marsupial, the mother carries her young, called joeys, in their pouch until they are around six months old.
Pademelons are a nocturnal species, resting during the day and searching for food during the cover of darkness at night.
Dusky pademelons are foragers, feeding on the undergrowth of lowland forests and in clearings, eating grass, leaves, shoots and fruits.
There are more than 330 different marsupial species found around the world.
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