Estimating age of wild eastern grey kangaroos through molar progression

Wendy J. King*, Graeme Coulson

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    1 Citation (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Age is an essential attribute in studies of animal development, survival and reproduction. Here we evaluate the age estimation technique of molar progression devised for kangaroos in 1965. We used 71 wild eastern grey kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) that were first captured and aged as pouch young at Wilsons Promontory National Park, Victoria, and subsequently found dead between the ages of 1 and 14 years. We expected that the original equation, derived from captive kangaroos in Queensland, would not estimate age correctly due to differences in diet and/or clinal variation in skull morphology. We found no difference in rate of molar progression between males (n = 44) and females (n = 27). Our overall regression of age on molar index (MI) was log10 (age, days) = 0.284 (MI) + 2.511, r2 = 0.97. The slope of this equation was indistinguishable from that of the original one, meaning that molar progression in the wild was equivalent to that originally developed on captive kangaroos, despite likely differences in diet and morphology.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article numberAM22043
    Number of pages5
    JournalAustralian Mammalogy
    Volume46
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 14 Dec 2023

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