The Hunt for Japan’s Phantom Kangaroo
Want to see a kangaroo? Unless you’re from Australia, you’d best either visit your local zoo or purchase airline tickets, because you won’t find them anywhere else!
Yet for some odd reason, the residents in the Mayama mountain district of Osaki city in Miyagi prefecture (220 miles north of Tokyo) believe otherwise, as they claim to have seen Japan’s phantom kangaroo.
According to Brent Swancer at CryptoMundo, the first kangaroo sighting in Japan occurred seven years ago. Since then, there have been at least 20 similar reports.
As recently as October 24, 2009, in fact, an eyewitness reported seeing a beige-colored creature 3.3’ tall with bright eyes. Soon after in December, an elderly woman supposedly saw a kangaroo sprinting through an open field nearby.
Local Mayama official Tetsuya Sasaki, who was interviewed by ABC News, said that as a joke, “some people have put up ‘kangaroo crossing’ signs on their roadside properties.”
But have they really seen a kangaroo? And if so, how the heck did it get to Japan?
It’s possible that a kangaroo or two fled a local zoo, yet Swancer (CryptoMundo) reports that there have been no reports of missing kangaroos. Another possibility is that some fool’s kangaroo pet broke loose and fled; this is likely since owning a kangaroo is fairly legal in Japan. But what if it’s not even a kangaroo to begin with?
An official at the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, Mr. Motayasu Ida, believes that the residents of Mayama have indeed seen a kangaroo. He explained: “If the body is as big as an Eastern Gray kangaroo, it would be able to maintain its body temperature, even when it’s cold.”
Japanese zoologist Hideo Obara concurred with Ida’s speculation, saying, “I wouldn’t be that unusual for a kangaroo to be living in Miyagi prefecture. Kangaroos are good at adapting to different environments and some species live in areas where the temperature gets below freezing.”
However, not everyone agrees. American cryyptozoologist—someone who “searches for animals considered to be legendary or otherwise nonsexist”—believes that what everyone has been seeing is in fact a wallaby. He shared his feelings with Swancer, saying, “There are wallabies adapted to colder climates that do well in northern locations. They are the ones that are most often, incorrectly, reported as kangaroos.”
Well, until somebody makes an official confirmation, the hunt for Japan’s phantom kangaroo continues!
By V Saxena on 31-03-2010
V Saxena
