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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Kangaroo Jack has died

by

290 days ago
20240923
 The Red Kangaroo named “Jack” who was captured looking sick at the Emperor Valley Zoo, Port-of-Spain.

The Red Kangaroo named “Jack” who was captured looking sick at the Emperor Valley Zoo, Port-of-Spain.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Kan­ga­roo Jack, the red kan­ga­roo at the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo whose ema­ci­at­ed ap­pear­ance sparked so­cial me­dia out­rage ear­li­er this year, has died.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day in re­sponse to a news­pa­per re­port, John Sey­ja­gat of the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T (ZSTT) said the kan­ga­roo died on May 3.

“Jack lived a full life and passed away with dig­ni­ty at age 12-14 years,” he said.

There had been wide­spread con­cern about Kan­ga­roo Jack’s wel­fare af­ter pho­tos of him sur­faced on so­cial me­dia.

At the time of­fi­cials of the zoo de­fend­ed the qual­i­ty of the an­i­mal’s care and said on­go­ing health as­sess­ments and fol­low-up eval­u­a­tions by lo­cal and for­eign wel­fare vet­eri­nary ex­perts de­ter­mined that he was “ac­tive, bright, alert and re­spon­sive with a good ap­petite and stool.”

His ap­pear­ance was at­trib­uted to his phys­i­o­log­i­cal state and age.

In April, Jack had a phys­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion con­duct­ed by the zoo’s vet­eri­nar­i­an and staff in con­sul­ta­tion with an­i­mal wel­fare ex­perts from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da School of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine and the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of Amer­i­ca which con­clud­ed that al­though no spe­cif­ic, clin­i­cal­ly de­tectable dis­ease was iden­ti­fied, Jack was a geri­atric kan­ga­roo with sev­er­al find­ings con­sis­tent with his old age.

Jack’s cause of death as di­ag­nosed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, School of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine was car­diomy­opa­thy, pul­monary con­ges­tion, en­teri­tis and he­pat­ic con­ges­tion.

“The car­diomy­opa­thy is like­ly the main con­trib­u­tor to the death of this an­i­mal lead­ing to pul­monary and he­pat­ic con­ges­tion with fi­bro­sis,” Sey­ja­gat said

He added that ZSTT and the Em­per­or Val­ley “take an­i­mal wel­fare se­ri­ous­ly and pro­vide ex­em­plary hus­bandry and care of its an­i­mals.”


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