Tie me kangaroo down, sport

[TheVat]

Until reading of Australia's first kangaroo attack death since 1936, on Monday, I hadn't realized that male roos perceive our bipedalism as a challenge posture.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-62884861

I hope all our Australian members are well - @beecee , who has been quiet lately, and IIRC is the same age as the victim...well, if he wanted to give a shout?

I realize I have possibly not created much fodder for discussion, beyond the obvious assertions that wild animals do not make good pets.  But perhaps there are exceptions.  

[Peterkin]

All the wild animals are under stress from habitat loss, migration route disruption, poaching, threatened food resources, contaminated water, etc, etc.

https://academic.oup.com/conphys/article/8/1/coz106/5678846

and captivity, however well-meaning is one of the causes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6892464/

Some wild animals adapt better to human companionship than others 

Most rodents and, ravens, crows and parrots do all right... but... as with parenthood,  or any relationship, much depends on what the human means by keeping a pet. Putting the animal in a cage, attending to their needs haphazardly, or housebreaking them and teaching them to do amusing tricks, or putting them on display for other people to gawk at, or barking orders and punishing them if they fail to obey -  or a friendship where the animal has a degree of autonomy and a healthy natural environment and the human takes some trouble to learn their needs and thought-process.

 

Of course, we know that a lot of people are bitten by pet dogs and kicked by their horses , murdered by spouses and children - so I guess we can screw up even relationships that are designed for domesticity.

[TheVat]

If I can broaden the topic to include other dangers down under,  am curious to find out what was the toxic weed that got into Aussie spinach...

https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/news/Pages/20221217_00.aspx

It sounds a lot like Jimson weed (Datura stramonium) effects, and I hear that Datura has spread (as an aggressive invasive species) to Australia.   Here in the US (where it is native, and throughout the Americas), horses and livestock will occasionally get sick from it, and some native tribes have used it as an hallucinogen (carefully dosing to avoid the anticholinergic toxicity) in spiritual quests.

[swansont]

28 minutes ago, TheVat said:

If I can broaden the topic to include other dangers down under

Where would it stop? Almost everything is poisonous or venomous, or will eat you (or your baby)