Nora Campbell (PhD candidate, Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES), UNSW Sydney)

Kangaroos have hopped the landscapes of Australia for millions of years, playing a crucial role in regulating vegetation within their ecosystems. They hold cultural significance for many First Nations communities and are iconic symbols of Australia. Their ability to persist in all corners of the continent, despite the impacts of European colonisation that decimated many other species, is a testament to their adaptability.

When I began my work on eastern grey kangaroos in 2021, I was driven towards a post-graduate degree by the vague sense that I might enjoy scientific research, and the overwhelming desire to know how the world works. As much research that has already been done on kangaroos (and believe me, there is a lot), one of the things that I find equally wonderful and frustrating about science is that there is always more to discover.

My honours year unfolded during the varying stages of COVID-driven lockdown, and I spent months trapped at home, staring at thousands of pictures of kangaroos taken by my supervisor, Dr Terry Ord. My main task was to identify subtle differences in ear shapes, a painstaking process that led me to identifying 130 different kangaroos from photographs taken over six years. As a side effect, I now have an uncanny ability to pick out and remember individual kangaroos from a mob, my oddly specific party trick.

The huge photographic dataset used for my honours project (currently over 5500 photos and counting) was too good to waste, and I jumped (pun intended) at the chance to continue this research as a PhD student. I now have 175 identified kangaroos in my population, spanning almost a decade. This journey has been a deep dive into the lives of these remarkable animals, and my quest for answers continues.

By studying this population through photographs, I was able to gain a remarkable understanding of not just the collective group, but also the unique individuals within it. I watched my favourite kangaroos grow year after year, sometimes with new joeys, sometimes without. I’ve witnessed males leave the population and suddenly reappear years later, all grown up. I was delighted to see an albino joey in the 2018 photos and was saddened to learn that it did not make it to 2019. This non-invasive method of monitoring has allowed me to observe the complexities of their lives without disturbing their natural behaviour.

Long-term monitoring plays an important role in our understanding of population dynamics. It reveals how social interactions change over time, highlights life history traits and tracks responses to environmental changes in the animal’s habitats. My research has also highlighted the importance of studying a population at an individual level as the dynamics of a group does not always reflect the behaviour of its members. There are popular kangaroos and shy ones, large groups and small ones, each kangaroo reacting in its own way as the population persists through drought and flooding.

A recent study has shown that older Australians often form similar emotional bonds with wildlife as they do with their own pets. Since publishing my research, I have had several members of the public reach out to me through email with questions about the behaviour of wild kangaroos that they see daily on their own properties. Kangaroos have certainly captured the curiosity of Australians, and there is so much still more to discover about how to best coexist with this iconic native species. I am thrilled to be able to contribute to this growing pool of knowledge alongside the people who have worked their entire lives to better understand the world’s favourite hopping marsupials.

Nora Campbell was recently awarded a Student Research Award to help support this research.