Observing Intention Movement in the Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo

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The Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo is one of twelve Tree Kangaroo species that live in Papua New Guinea. The Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo has been poorly studied due to the fact that they are hard to observe in the wild, thus little is known about the species. For this reason, I chose to pursue my research in studying about the behavior of the Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo. This behavioral observation study focuses on the Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo, and how a behavior I labeled as crouching may be an intention movement for jumping. This crouching behavior consists of the tree kangaroo in a crouched position with its head tilted down at the ground, and its posterior end in an elevated position above the head. The data was recorded by observing a Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo at the Columbus Zoo using the continuous focal animal sampling strategy, and using a behavior recording program BORIS. The behaviors were named and described using an ethogram. The results were analyzed using a kinetic diagram, creating a behavior budget, and statistics were ran using R in RStudio. I found that there was a significant pattern from crouching to jumping in my kinetic diagram. As well as a significant p-value of 2.2e-16 from a chi-squared test. The behavior budget indicated that while sleeping (46.4%), sitting (24.9%), and eating (12.7%) accounted for most of the behavior budget, crouching was responsible for 8.7% of the time spent observing. These results suggest that crouching behavior is an intention movement for jumping. The broader implications of this study are that zoo settings can be a useful tool for learning more about species with little known information, and that are hard to observe in the wild.