Wildlife photographer captures rare glimpse inside the kangaroo pouch

For wildlife photographer Jason Edwards, it was the day the “god of photography threw me a line”.

Two years ago Mr Edwards was on a field trip with a female researcher documenting desert mammals in the Australian Outback for an international project when they came across a wild, but remarkably friendly, red kangaroo.

The researcher immediately recognised the marsupial as an orphan that she had raised by hand six years before and the kangaroo – who was carrying a tiny, hairless, month-old joey in her pouch – soon recognised the scientist.


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As the pair’s friendship was rekindled, Mr Edwards, a Melbourne-based science and nature photographer, realised that he had been handed a unique opportunity: to get up close and personal to a wild kangaroo that was comfortable enough with humans to possibly let him photograph her joey in her pouch.

After a few days of returning to the semi-desert national park in far northern New South Wales and talking to and sitting with the kangaroo, the researcher was able to get close enough to her former orphan to open her pouch.

In a matter of seconds, Mr Edwards managed to slip in a macro lens and capture this rare glimpse of life inside the marsupial’s pouch. The photo – of a newborn joey, known as a pinkie, suckling the mother’s teat – is being exhibited as part of the New Scientist Eureka Prize for Science Photography Exhibition in Sydney.