How to get into the pouch. Research on the riddle of the kangaroo birth inside and outside the zoo (1823-1926)

Ever since Europeans sighted the first kangaroo in Australia, it posed riddles galore to naturalists. For example: were Marsupials real mammals? One question proved a particularly hard nut to crack and led to a century-long debate: how do kangaroos actually give birth? The advent of the zoo in the first half of the nineteenth century made it possible, at least in principle, to tackle the problem through observation. British naturalist Richard Owen enlisted the Regent¿s Park Zoo in London to devise a research program. He put forward the hypothesis that the mother put the tiny embryo into the pouch using her lips but could not observe it as such. Naturalists in other European zoos were eager to come up with definite observations such as Theodor Leisering, a veterinarian at the Zoologische Garten in Berlin, and Ernst Pinkert, the owner of a private zoo in Leipzig. In its first part this paper will analyze the reports published by European naturalists. In what way did they use the zoo as a resource? What was the epistemic value of observations as opposed to the classical anatomical approach (dissection)? What role did the animal keepers play who had been told to observe the pregnant kangaroo day and night? In the second part this paper will contrast the European zoo-based investigations with the observations made by naturalists, hunters and farmers in Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The riddle of the kangaroo birth had become a question much debated in the Australian public sphere, in particular in newspapers. In how far was this research conducted outside the zoo different to the European one? Finally, this paper will ask in what ways information about the reproduction of marsupials circulated between continents - or not.Peer reviewe