According to Greg Bloom, a group of hunters gathered to help a young man with terminal cancer achieve his last wish of catching a wild boar with his hunting dogs. While hunting, one of the highly trained dogs was chasing pigs by scent and collided with a big buck kangaroo. The kangaroo held and wrestled the dog by its protective gear (boars have tusks like knives). The owner , Tonkins , was horrified that his dog or the kangaroo would get hurt and ran in to save both parties. The man backed off to give the kangaroo some space, but because the kangaroo kept coming closer, the man punches the kangaroo’s snout. The kangaroo hopped away and we laughed at the absurdity of the situation and how unfortunate it was for the dog and kangaroo. The dog’s owner felt no malice to the kangaroo but had to step in and fix a bad situation before it got worse. Unfortunately, the young man, Kailem, lost his brave battle with cancer , so this hunt is part of his family and friends’ treasured memories.”

“Tonkins was very lucky because he could have been killed,” says Marco Festa-Bianchet, a National Geographic explorer who studies kangaroos and who is a biologist at Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec.

Contrary to popular belief, kangaroos don’t normally try to box, or punch, each other, says Festa-Bianchet. Instead, they prefer to balance on their strong tails and kick with their powerful back legs.

“If the kangaroo had done that to Tonkins, it could have disemboweled him,” says Festa-Bianchet.