A few weeks ago, a 2 meter kangaroo randomly showed up at a suburban neighborhood in Moreton Bay, north of Brisbane, Australia.
The 95 kg kangaroo was spotted by a local woman on a footpath while she was walking her dogs. The eastern grey roo made international headlines after the woman, Linda Hellyer, posted a video of him online.
“I looked up [and] he was standing in the middle of the road,” Hellyer said. “He was watching me and my dogs and they were watching him. I didn’t get too close but I took a quick photo and video and left him alone.”
Kangaroos are a regular occurrence for locals in the area, but Dave’s sheer size, coupled with a threatening torn ear, makes him stand out from the rest. “We have a whole mob of roos from the area… that’s where they were living. We’ve just developed around them and now they haven’t got a massive amount of room,” Hellyer said.
But Dave — as he was nicknamed by staff at the local golf course which he frequents — may have a worthy challenger in his midst.
Roger the red kangaroo weighs in at a whopping 89 kg and also stands 2 meters tall from head to tail. But Roger is only nine years old.
Red kangaroos typically live until they are around 15 years old and usually grow bigger than eastern greys, which live up to six years in the wild and and 20 years in captivity.
And if his height was not intimidating enough, Roger’s ripped frame and bulging muscles make him look like a hulking human bodybuilder. The red roo, who lives at the Kangaroo Sanctuary in Alice Springs, likes to crush metal buckets with his bare paws to work out.
Roger is also trained in hand-to-hand combat and can disembowel his opponent with a well-placed kick, according to sanctuary manager Chris “Brolga” Barnes.
“His daily exercise regime is sparring [kickboxing] his rivals and chasing his human ‘Mum’, me,” Barnes said.
Although Roger may weigh less than the street-wise Dave, Barnes expects the sanctuary’s alpha male to grow even bigger as he gets older.
But Roger wasn’t always this big and menacing. He was rescued by Barnes as a baby joey in 2006, inside the pouch of his mother who was found dead on a highway.
He has lived in the sanctuary ever since, where he was obviously fed right.
Being the alpha, the giant roo is very protective of the female members of his troop. “[He] will attack anyone or anything that gets too close to him or his women,” Barnes said.
The now more mature kangaroo displayed his softer side when he was seen hugging a stuffed toy bunny he had received from a fan just before Easter.
“When I gave it to him he snatched it off me really quickly and proceeded to attack it, giving it a ‘bear hug’ and wrestling it, even hugging it and kicking out as he would do in kick boxing match, he’s an expert kick boxer,” Barnes said.
You can find out more about Roger on the sanctuary website.