Caring for a Baby Wallaby | BBC Earth

But although Stella is inundated with roos and wallabies, none of them take up as much of her time as young wallaby Neil. He's an orphan from a car accident where his mum was killed, and Neil's been with us one week. Neil is just one and a half months old. In the wild, he'd be around nine months before he left his mother's pouch. He doesn't have a second coat. He's just got the light top coat that he has while he's in his mum's pouch. We do call them little velvets. I'm covering his eyes a little bit in mum's pouch. It's a bit darker than here. He's getting a bit used to it, so it's not too stressful. In the first three days here, he cried out at night time for his mum. It's heartbreaking to listen to him call out for his mum. What we do then is we pick them up and I put him in the bed with me so he can feel my heartbeat. The moment I picked him up and cuddled him and held him next to my heart, the crying stopped. Because they develop for so long in the pouch, the beating of their mother's heart is deeply comforting for baby marsupials. Research shows that maternal nurture physically changes brain chemistry and alters the way a youngster's body responds to stress. Without this closeness and reassurance, orphans have been known to die of anxiety. But with new animals arriving all the time, Stella can't always be there for Neil. And he urgently needs a companion the same size and age who he can hang out with.