I was.

I waas really sort of shocked that it would work.

It was a bit of a risk getting a grant going to Australia to do this sort of bizarre, bizarre but simple experiment on kangaroos.

But nobody had thought of doing it before.

It s so what we did is we had 16 kangaroos used to human presence as they were used from different wildlife parks.

You carry out a six of thes training trials where, you know, you just place a piece of food in a box.

It's on the ground on the box is available to them.

But then the key differences in that seventh test trial when you close the box on, then the kangaroo start grappling around often with their claws or their snouts to get the food open, and it becomes immediately apparent it's closed.

And this is when they started to look towards the experimental and then look back at the food on day were also sort of asking for help by approaching the experimenter and in some cases, even sniffing and scratching the experimenter.

The first kangaroo we tested.

It worked.

So yes, actually, our ball shocked.

I remember distinctly.

And so, No, it was fantastic.

I'm pretty sure I had a big smile on my face.

A partial shocked as well.

Okay.

E would like this to spark a bit more interest in doing cognitive research on kangaroos.

A marsupials in general.

It is quite common that they're considered to be quite stupid on.

Hopefully this research goes some way to show that actually, they do have some cognitive abilities of interest.