Kangaroo Attacks: Humans, Dogs, How, Why, Where | Sea Life, Islands and Oceania

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KANGAROO ATTACKS

Attack in by small kangaroo in Melrose, South Australia in 2007: "kangaroo grabbed onto Shoeshine's shirt, stood back on his tail and kicked - he wanted food and wanted it now!"

Adult kangaroos big strong animals and males especially can be formidable fighters. They have seriously injured and even killed humans and are known for drowning dogs. They have also seriously damaged cars and killed passengers of cars that collided with them. Kangaroos sometime hop through the doors of houses and destroy furniture and attack children. Coming across a kangaroo may seem like a great photo opportunity, but the animals can become violent and aggressive with tourists that get too close. [Source: Taiyler Simone Mitchell, Business Insider December 24, 2022]

Kangaroos rarely attack humans but will fight if they feel threatened. Dogs often chase kangaroos, which have been known to lead the pets into water and then pin them underwater and drown them. The Canberra government warns people: Don't approach a kangaroo when it is standing up and looking straight at you, especially if it growls or snorts. People with dogs should keep them on a leash away from kangaroos.

In 1936, William Cruickshank, 38, died in a hospital in Hillston in New South Wales state on the Australian east coast months after he'd been attacked by a kangaroo. Cruickshank was a hunter. He suffered extensive head injuries including a broken jaw as he attempted to rescue his two dogs who were fighting with a large kangaroo, The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported at the time. [Source: Associated Press, September 13, 2022]

Sometimes kangaroos break into homes. In September 2000, a kangaroo terrorized a family in a northern Australian town for three hours after smashing through their glass front door in the middle of the night, police said. Associated Press reported: Five children were sleeping in the house in Jabiru, a mining town 200 kilometers west of the Northern Territory capital of Darwin, when the 1.7-meter-tall animal crashed in shortly after midnight, injuring itself. The children's mother, Lisa Miller, called police. "There was blood and broken glass everywhere, blood all over the child's bed and up the walls," said Constable Alistair Taylor, one of two officers who came to the scene. Taylor and his partner, Constable Tim Perry, spent two hours trying to coax the crazed and wounded animal out of the house with a curtain rod and a rake. The ordeal ended when police roped the animal and hustled it into a police car. The kangaroo was put down. Also see the attack in a house in Canberra Below. [Source: Associated Press, September 13, 2000]

Kangaroo Warnings and Attacks in Canberra

In 2004, during a drought, Australians living in Canberra were warned to keep their distance from aggressive kangaroos after a kangaroo attacked and badly scratched a woman and killed her small pet dog. Reuters reported: Eastern Grey kangaroos, which can grow to 5.6 feet tall and weigh 154 lbs., have started moving out of the parched bush into inner Canberra suburbs during the day to look for grass and water, increasing their contact with people. A senior wildlife ecologist with Environment ACT, Murray Evans, said the kangaroos could pose a threat to people and dogs, with one woman savaged by a large kangaroo as she was walking her small, pet dog in a paddock last week. “Her dog went near the kangaroo and she followed and before she knew it the kangaroo lashed out, scratching her down the side of her body,” Evans told Reuters. [Source: Reuters, July 7, 2004]

Christine Canham was walking her four golden retrievers around Dunlop Ponds in Canberra's northern suburbs when her dog, Summer, had a run-in with a kangaroo. The kangaroo attacked and drowned the dog in a pond by holding it under the water with its hind legs while it hit out at one of the other dogs with its front legs. “My friend started shouting: ’There’s a kangaroo in the pond. It’s got Summer’. It was surreal, like your worst nightmare,” Canham told the Canberra Times newspaper. “She was screaming and screaming. The kangaroo just stared back at us. I will never forget that.” Evans said it was not unusual for kangaroos to flee into water if they felt under threat and, as a last defense, they would try to drown their predator with their powerful hind legs.

He said most of the behavioral change in the usually placid animals was due to the scarcity of feed after a run of dry years in Canberra, the inland bush capital, as Australia battles its worst drought in a century. Kangaroos usually shelter by day and emerge at dusk to feed during the night but the reduction in available grass meant they were now travelling by day in search of food, dramatically increasing the number of encounters with people — and dogs. “Kangaroos and dogs just do not mix. Kangaroos see dogs as a threat and get spooked by them,” Evans said. “The main message people should remember is that kangaroos may look cuddly and furry but they are wild animals and people should keep their distance and keep dogs on leads around them.”

At 2:00am in March 2009 in Garran, an upper middle-class suburb of Canberra, 42-year-old Beat Ettlin was woken up by the sound of smashing glass and saw something big jumping across his bed. Shorty after that his 10-year-old son yelled from his room: "There's a roo in my room!" Dressed in his underwear, Ettlin rushed in his son’s room ans managed to wrestle the kangaroo out the door, but suffered numerous scratches to his body in process. The kangaroo had cut itself on broken glass when it broke into the house through a window and left a trail of blood through the house. Once outside it hopped quickly into nearby bushland.

Ettlin said the kangaroowas around 5 foot 9 inches tall and left claw gouges in the wooden frame of the master bedroom. "My initial thought when I was half awake was, 'It's a lunatic ninja coming through the window,"' Ettline told Associated Press."It seems about as likely as a kangaroo breaking in." Greg Baxter, a Queensland University lecturer on Australian native animals, told CBS News, kangaroos rarely invade homes but have done so in the past when panicked. "It is very unusual, but when kangaroos become panicked, they lose all sense of caution and just fly for where they think they can get away," Baxter said. [Source: CBS News, March 9, 2009]

Man Killed by Kangaroo in Southwest Australia

political cartoon from 1917 from The Telegraph

In September 2022. A 77-year-old man died after a rare fatal kangaroo attack in remote, semirural Redmond, 400 kilometers (250 miles) southeast of Perth in southwestern Australia. The man had kept a wild Western grey kangaroos as a pet and was killed by that animal.. It was reported as the first fatal attack by a kangaroo in Australia since 1936. A relative found the 77-year-old man with “serious injuries” on his property. It was believed he had been attacked earlier in the day by the kangaroo, which police shot dead because it was preventing paramedics from reaching the injured man, police said. “The kangaroo was posing an ongoing threat to emergency responders," the statement said.[Source: Associated Press, September 13, 2022]

Associated Press reported: There are legal restrictions on keeping Australian native fauna as pets, but the police media office said they had no information to make public regarding whether the victim had a permit. Tanya Irwin, who cares for macropods at the Native Animal Rescue service in Perth, said authorities rarely issue permits to keep kangaroos in Western Australia. “This looks like it was an adult male and they become quite aggressive and they don’t do well in captivity,” Irwin said. “We don’t know what the situation was; If he was in pain or why he was being kept in captivity and unfortunately ... they’re not a cute animal, they’re a wild animal,” Irwin added.

Western grey kangaroos are common in Australia’s southwest. They can weigh up to 54 kilograms (119 pounds) and stand 1.3 meters (4 feet three inches) tall. The males can be aggressive and fight people with the same techniques as they use with each other. They use their short upper limbs to grapple with their opponent, use their muscular tails to take their body weight, then lash out with both their powerful clawed hind legs.

If a person gets into a fight with a kangaroo he or she should never hold the arms of the animal, as it "gives them the confidence to kick" back with their strong hind legs.

Why Kangaroos Attack People

Kangaroos are usually peaceful animals and are herbivores (eat plants). The only times they might attack humans are when they need food, are in a panick or in self defense. Many incidents involving attacking kangaroos appear to originate from people feeding them so they come to expect food and get angry when they don't get it. Sometimes drought conditions bring them into towns where there is still water and green grass, like sometimes happens in Canberra. Sometimes dogs are involved. [Source: Amazing Australia]

Research by Guy Ballard, who was a doctoral student at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales in the early 2000s, showed more than triple the expected number of kangaroo attacks occurred between South Grafton and Coffs Harbour on the New South Wales North Coast. There were two kangaroo attacks on children in Grafton in 1999 and 2002, and 15 to 20 reports in the ten year period after that. "In many communities the line is blurred between people's territory and kangaroo areas," Ballard said. "The people live on the edge of rural land, and the kangaroos want to take advantage of natural resources like green grass and water …," he said. "[P]eople need to give animals their space. But that's hard if you come around the corner of your house and there's one right in front of you." [Source: Stephanie Peatling, National Geographic News, May 6, 2005]

Before of the man attacked above before he was attacked: "man gets close to the kangaroo; afterwards the kangaroo grabbed his shirt, stood back on his tail and kicked him

Stephanie Peatling wrote in National Geographic News: In some of the northern New South Wales towns he surveyed, Ballard found that 100 percent of people saw kangaroos every day. Of those surveyed, three-fourths had kangaroos in their backyards. Ballard documented 15 reports of contact where kangaroos had either growled at people or chased them away. "In some cases it was people coming between a mother and her children, and so she reacted aggressively," Ballard said. "One man was jogging along a bush track, and a kangaroo jumped out. Another woman was picking lemons, and [a lemon] fell down and hit a kangaroo underneath it — and so the kangaroo interacted with her," he said. "We have also had reports of dogs being attacked and killed."

Australia's cities are expanding. At the same time, urbanites are also leaving cities for smaller regional towns. Ballard believes this migration will likely cause confrontation between humans and animals to increase. Ballard said his findings match work done by Darryl Jones, a senior lecturer in ecology at the Australian School of Environmental Studies at Griffith University in Brisbane.

American Tourist Repeated Assaulted by Small 'Frisky' Kangaroo

There are serious kangaroo attacks and then there are ones where the person isn't hurt so badly and make for a funny story or video. In June 2023, an American tourist in Perth, Western Australia was shown in a TikTok video lightly kicking a small kangaroo that repeatedly charging towards him. "It's like the kangaroo just wanted to have a bar fight because the dude was messing with his lady," one TikTok user said. Marielle Descalsota wrote in Business Insider: In a TikTok posted by @brooke.so.hip on June 11, 2023 a man was seen shielding a woman away from a small kangaroo trailing behind her at an enclosure in Perth. [Source: Marielle Descalsota, Business Insider, June 14, 2023]

The video garnered some 17.5 million views as of June 14. "My dad was just trying to make sure that kangaroo stopped getting frisky with that lady," @brooke.so.hip wrote in the video. In the video, the kangaroo was shown standing up and flailing its arms toward the man. The man then held the animal back with one hand.

The man was later shown lightly kicking the kangaroo away as it continued chasing him and another man, who looked to be much younger. At the end of the video, one staff member at the enclosure was shown sternly telling the kangaroo off. Users on TikTok were thoroughly entertained by the video, with several users saying that the kangaroo was taunting the man. One user wrote: "It's like the kangaroo just wanted to have a bar fight because the dude was messing with his lady." "That kangaroo turns its head looked at the kid when he walked up like you wanna piece of me too," another user wrote, referring to the young man in the video.

Kangaroo and Wallaby Attacks in Queensland

In March 2004 in Burpengary, Queensland, near Brisbane, 48-year-old Sylvia Aldren was picking roses in the her garden outside her house when she noticed a few kangaroos nearby. One large one approached her and pushed her to the ground and repeatedly kicked, bit and scratched her as family and friends looked on in horror. She was taken to Caboolture hospital in her blood covered dress with puncture marks, bruises and deep scratches on her chest, thighs, arms and legs but released a few hours later. People in the area claim a mob of at least 50 kangaroos that live nearby have terrorized them for years and also on occasion attacked them. [Source: Amazing Australia]

In July 2003, two-meter-tall kangaroo was killed with an axe after it attacked two couples the central Queensland town of Monto, 400 kilometers north-east of Brisbane. New South Wales holidaymaker John Crouch was forced to use an axe to kill the kangaroo which pounced on him and his wife Helen outside the annexe of his caravan parked in the yard of his in-laws' house in the town The animal scratched Helen’s face, back, and groin and kicked her in the stomach before her husband managed to pull the enraged animal off her. John suffered a badly sprained hand, scratches and bruising. "It was killed or be killed," Mr Crouch told the Bundaberg News-Mail. "I'm absolutely sure it would have killed us if it could. "It was completely crazy and became enraged without provocation." Police and local parks and wildlife officers said the animal may have been the same one that attacked the Lawsons (See Below). Wildlife officers believe it was an animal which had become dangerous after being released or escaping from the captivity of a previous owner. Kangaroo owner Colin Candy, who makes no secret of keeping a kangaroo without a permit in his own backyard at Hervey Bay, said the roo may have just been hungry. "The animal might have just been looking for something to eat because they trust humans," Mr Candy said. [Source: AAP, July 11, 2003]

In June 2003 local motel owner Doug Lawson of Monto, Queensland, and his wife Pauline Lawson were left with minor injuries after the kangaroo knocked them to the ground in an unprovoked attack. Doug claims he was chased into his house by the kangaroo that attacked him. Pauline him running into the house with blood on his face, the roo then attacked him once more and knocked him down, Doug defended himself with a broom and his wife Pauline used a hose and they managed to drive the kangaroo outside the house.The couple was shaken, bruised and scratched. Doug said the attack was not provoked and thought the kangaroo might have been after food.

In December 2009, a two year old girl was attacked by a wallaby at White Rock on the south side of Cairns Tamar Hutchins and her daughter Susan were feeding their horses when suddenly the wallaby emerged from the bush and attacked Susan. The wallaby had her head in its mouth and was slamming its back legs into her repeatedly, causing wounds to the left side of her body and face. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it, her mother Tamar said later.

94-Year-Old Grannie and Pepper-Spray-Wielding Police Fight Off Giant Red

In July 2011, 94-year-old Phyllis Johnson was attacked and kicked several times by a kangaroo in Charleville in southwest Queensland, and taken to hospital for treatment for cuts and scratches. Police were called in and had to use pepper spray to fend off the roo, which ultimately hopped off into a to field. Later, at the request of Johnson’s son, the kangaroo was euthanized.

Brooke Baskin wrote in the Courier-Mail: A giant red buck bounded into her Charleville backyard as she was hanging out the washing, knocking her to the ground and kicking her several times. The plucky bushie tried to beat the massive kangaroo off with a broom, but was outclassed when it came to sheer size, strength and bulk. Bruised, scratched and bleeding, she commando-crawled along the backyard until she reached a post on the side of her granny flat where she could pull herself upright and escape her attacker by retreating indoors. "I thought it was going to kill me," Ms Johnson told The Courier-Mail from her bed at Charleville Hospital yesterday. "It was taller than me and it just ploughed through the clothes on the washing line straight for me. "I happened to have a broom nearby and I just started swinging at it. I bashed it on the head but it kept going for me, not even the dog would help, it was too frightened." Ms Johnson said the raging roo maintained a vigil outside her Old Cunnamulla Rd home, until her son, who lived upstairs, arrived. Despite wielding a big stick for protection, Ms Johnson's son couldn't get the kangaroo to hop along and the frightened duo were forced to call in the police. [Source: Brooke Baskin, Courier-Mail, July 26, 2011]

Associated Press reported: Police Sergeant Stephen Perkins said two officers were sent to assist the woman, who was attacked by a big red kangaroo in Charleville. "Upon alighting from the car the kangaroo approached one of the officers, the kangaroo was aggressive and the officer had to deploy his capsicum spray to subdue the animal," Sgt Perkins said. The kangaroo initially retreated but spotted the second police officer and bounded towards him, and was sprayed a second time. Sgt Perkins said it was common to use pepper spray to subdue aggressive dogs but unusual to be used on an angry kangaroo. "Big Red" kangaroos are one of Australia's largest kangaroo species and males can weigh more than 80kilogramss and stand more than 1.5 meters tall. They rarely stray into urbanised areas. [Source: Associated Press, Jul 26 2011]

Kangaroo Attacks in New South Wales

In October 1996, in Grafton, New South Wales, 13-year-old Steven Shorten was golfing at the Grafton District Golf Club. He hit a ball a bit off course. When he went looking for the ball a 1.5-meter tall kangaroo grabbed him and repeatedly jumped on him, resulting in massive facial wounds and cuts to his abdomen, back and legs. His father Rodney Shorten sued the golf club and claimed A$750,000 for physical injuries and emotional damage. At school, kids nicknamed Steven Skippy after the TV kangaroo. Though first dismissed by a local court the father took the case to the Supreme Court in Canberra, which ruled in his favor. The amount paid was not disclosed. The judge heard evidence from four other golfers attacked by kangaroos and found that the club was negligent, because it had known kangaroos at the golf course were aggressive but had not done enough to warn visitors.

This report emailed by Alan Jones to Amazing Australia in January 2010: “I am an active 77 year old male living on a small property in the Emerald Beach area, north of Coffs Harbour NSW.” In the 1980s, “we used to see only an occasional kangaroo around. Over the last 5 years all that has changed. There are now scores of kangaroos to be seen at any time around and in our property. However, I have never ever been attacked or even threatened by a kangaroo. The normal thing was that at my approach to any, they would hop away.” January 15, 2010 was different.

It was a fine, warm day. About 10am I was walking down a hill to a small enclosed area. My path took me to about 7 meters from where a small group (3 or 4) kangaroos were lying down. At my approach a young one promptly hopped away. Then two adults stood up. I expected them to hop away too. However, without warning one of them came straight for me, uttering a kind of hissing sound. It knocked me to the ground and I remember using my arms and legs as effectively as I could to keep it at bay. After a few seconds it moved away, but as I stood up it came at me again. I didn’t have time to find a stone or stick to defend myself. I grabbed and twisted its left upper limb and it left the scene. I didn’t wait around to see if it would come back. My injuries were superficial abrasions to the right forearm, both legs and right buttock. My long sleeved shirt and trousers were badly ripped. Hopefully the kangaroo had a sore arm. The cause of the attack was unlikely to have been anything to do with food. We have never fed the roos on our property. There is a plentiful coverage of juicy fresh grass around. I suspect the attack may have been to do with an aggressive male protecting his small harem..

Kangaroo Attacks in the Port Maquarie Area of New South Wales

In November 2011, in Lake Cathie, south of Port Macquarie,, two-year-old Zakkiah Galea was playing on his family's three hectare property when a female eastern grey kangaroo attacked him. His mother who was eight months pregnant tried to rescue him but couldn’t. Finally his father managed to fight off the animal. Zakkiah was rushed to hospital with a puncture in his chest, a gash on his leg, and two large gouges across his face that required thirteen stitches. Several neighbours claimed to have also been attacked around the same time. [Source: Amazing Australia]

In June 2012, in south Port Maquarie, Kirrily McWilliams was confronted by a growling female eastern grey kangaroo in her backyard but managed to escape unhurt. The next day the marsupial returned and grabbed her dog — a 65-kilogram mastiff. When McWilliams she called the National Parks and Wildlife Services (NPWS) for help all they told her was ignore the roo. A day later while she was walking down her driveway the kangaroo came out of nowhere and charged her at high speed. There were no trees to hide behind nearby so McWilliams rolled into a ball on the ground in self defence, the kangaroo pounced on her a few times. She was left with scratches o her arms and a foot long gash in her back and some torn clothing. Her husband was attacked later same day but fought off the roo with a shovel. A day later, the NPWS finally issued a permit to kill the roo but by that time the animal had left the area and attacked another person.

The kangaroo struck McWilliams several times, clawing at her with its powerful hind legs before bounding away. She sustained a large gash and other scratches on her back. She told the Dail Mail: 'If you stand and confront them they can easily tear you apart because that's what they do to each other.'...It was lucky it was cool weather and I had two layers of clothing, otherwise it could have been worse.' According to thetelegraph.continental Mrs McWilliams said she was disappointed by way NPWS had reacted. ‘I'm for protecting kangaroos but there seems to be nothing in place to help people,’ she said. ‘I had to be injured before they did anything. I have three children and it could have been one of them.' [Source: Phil Vinter, Daily Mail, May 29, 2012]

Kangaroo Attacks in Victoria

In September 2013, in Echuca, Victoria, four eastern grey kangaroos entered a housing estate in and jumped into a swimming pool. After the swim one of them smashed its way in to the house of Paul Giorgianni through the front window where it thoroughly trashed the lounge room and bed room. Paul himself was not hurt in the mayhem but the kangaroo was bleeding and had to be put down. [Source: Amazing Australia]

In November 2009 in Arthur's Creek, Victoria, 49-year-old Chris Rickard was walking around his property with his dog, a blue heeler named Rocky. They came across a sleeping kangaroo that woke up and tried to get away. Rocky chased the kangaroo, which jumped into water to escape. The dog followed. In a self defence move typical for kangaroos the kangaroo grabbed the dog with its front paws and held it under water to drown it. At this time, Rickard showed up and jumped into the water to save his dog. The five-foot kangaroo attacked Rickard while still holding the dog. Rickard sustained a big gash on his forehead and several deep gashes on his abdomen and chest while he was under water trying to pull his half drowned dog away and reach shallower water. The kangaroo didn’t back off until Rickard elbowed it in the throat. [Source: Metro, November 23, 2009]

Rickard said that when tried to pull his dog free, the kangaroo turned on him, and attack him with its hind legs. “I thought I might take a hit or two dragging the dog out from under his grip, but I didn’t expect him to actually attack me,” he told the Metro from his hospital bed. “It was a shock at the start because it was a kangaroo, about 5ft high — they don’t go around killing people” adding Rocky was “half-drowned” when he pulled him from the water.

Man Fought with ‘Jacked’ Kangaroo to Save Drowning Dog

In October 2023, on the banks of the Murray River near the town of Mildura, in the southern state of Victoria, an Australian man fought with a 'jacked' eastern grey kangaroo in the shallows of a river while the kangaroo had his dog in a headlock. [Source: Nick Squires, The Telegraph, October 17, 2023]

Nick Squires wrote in The Telegraph:Fearing that his dog Hutchy was in danger of drowning with the kangaroo’s paws around its head, Mick Moloney decided to intervene. “I looked [towards the river] and behind these reeds, I could just see this massive kangaroo…standing there with his arms actually in the water just staring at me. After about 15 seconds, Hutchy came up and he was in a headlock with this kangaroo. Water was just gushing out of his mouth and he yelped quite badly,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Worried that no one would believe him, the former police officer recorded the incident on his phone. As he waded into the water to scare off the six-foot-tall kangaroo, Mr Moloney can be heard saying: “I’m going to punch your f — ing head in. Let go of my dog.” As he moved closer, the kangaroo, thought to be an eastern grey, lashed out and its claws hit Mr Moloney in the chest, sending his mobile phone flying into the water. Mr Moloney was struck by how large and muscled the marsupial was, adding: “The muscles on this thing, I was (thinking) ‘this thing’s just got out of jail or something’. It was jacked.” The video goes blank as the phone is dropped in the river. However, Mr Moloney was able to fish it out in time to film the animal taking another swipe at him. On the footage, he can be heard laughing in disbelief at what had happened.

He later described the confrontation as “a bit of a tussle”. Mr Moloney’s dog managed to escape from the clutches of the kangaroo, which was filmed after the encounter still standing in the river. “I got my dog back, that’s the main thing,” he said. Hutchy is an Akita, a robust breed of working dog that originated in the mountains of Japan.

Wildlife experts said the dog may have chased the kangaroo into the river and that the animal then turned to defend itself. “The normal response of a kangaroo, when chased by a perceived predator, is to flee in fright,” said Lisa Palma, the chief executive officer of Wildlife Victoria, an animal rescue service and conservation organisation. “Kangaroos are wild animals and, as such, will view human beings, and dogs, as predators.”

Mr Moloney is also a mixed martial arts and Brazilian jujitsu instructor and said he had received a fair bit of ribbing since the incident. “I’m getting a lot of people sending me messages [asking] ‘what are we doing now, roo-jitsu?’” he said. Eastern grey kangaroos are powerfully built and can lean back on their tails to box each other during fights. Large adults can weigh 120lbs and when standing erect, reach up to seven feet tall.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org , National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, Australian Museum, David Attenborough books, Australia Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The Conversation, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated July 2025