any of several species of plant-eating marsupial mammals of Australia, New Guinea, and adjacent islands that hops on its on their long powerful hind legs and have a long thick tail: genus Macropus
native name in an Aboriginal language. In their journals of their voyage to Australia in 1770, both Captain James Cook and his companion Joseph Banks recorded kangooroo or kanguru as the aboriginal name for this animal. Later travellers, failing to find the word in use among various aboriginal tribes, suggested that Cook and Banks misheard the word, or misapplied an aboriginal name for an emu, or even mistook some irrelevant expression for the animal's name (compare note at indri). They were not mistaken, however; the word belongs to the Gungu Yimidhirr language of Northern Queensland