What do you do if a kangaroo “squares up” on you?
That’s not a rhetorical question, I’m genuinely concerned and interested, just in case I ever find myself in a situation like this man did. Because it looks like his method of just stiff arming the wild animal doesn’t work all that well.
Judging by the hashtags used on this video, this kangaroo encounter occurred somewhere in Australia (specifically Western Australia) at a small zoo of some sort. (Looks more like the Tiger King kind of zoo than any legitimate zoo, but who knows).
The video starts off with a man stepping in between a free roaming kangaroo and a woman. If the TikTok’s caption is true, the wild animal was trying to “get it on” with the woman, and this buff dad decided to swoop in to save the day.
It can be assumed that the man’s daughter is filming the video, in which she shouts to her Dad “here’s your chance to fight a kangaroo.” Every Dad’s dream I’m sure.
The kangaroo has some pretty good “boxing ring manner,” protecting itself while still getting a couple of punches and kicks in on the father. The man is doing his best to deescalate the fight, but the “boomer” (that’s a nickname for Kangaroos in Australia, not referring to the dad) pins him up against fence.
The dad raises one of his legs into the air to act as a defense mechanism, but that doesn’t slow down the roo. Both the man and the daughter cannot stop laughing as this crazy encounter unfolds.
Things get a little bit less comical though when the kangaroo gets in a couple of double leg kicks while standing on its tail. If you didn’t know, kangaroo’s tails actually act as their strongest leg, and the leverage it gives them allows for the brutal leg kicks they have been commonly known to deliver.
Once the fight intensifies, another person (possibly a bystander, possibly the man’s son) steps in to try and help. “Helping” is really just doing the same exact thing that the dad is doing, which isn’t making the kangaroo go away.
In my personal favorite part of the clip, once the second person walks up, the kangaroo looks right at the camera as if to say:
“You getting this? I’m about to kick both of their asses.”
The roo doesn’t let up, and even for a split second when it looks like the two men are able to walk off, the kangaroo comes roaring back to continue to deliver “thunder from down under.”
In my second personal favorite part of the video, the man pulls out a classic dad-intimidation-tactic and begins to point his finger at the kangaroo like its a dog. It appears that the man tries to reason with the wild animal, and was hoping that the finger point would be that extra bit of “knock it off” that he needed.
And you might get tired of hearing all the squawking birds in the background of the video, which definitely did not help the situation at all. Honestly, the caged birds might have been rooting for the kangaroo and were chanting “fight, fight, fight” and the dad never even knew it.
Finally, as the man and his son (?) continue to retreat, someone from the zoo (or whatever it is) comes out and starts to scold the kangaroo, which immediately makes it stop advancing on its attack.
Where was this lady a couple of minutes ago?
All in all, both the dad and the kangaroo come out of the fight unscathed, and if it were a professional boxing match, the crowd would have probably booed them due to the lack of big swings and knockout punches (or kicks).
Watch the hilarious TikTok video below, which is captioned:
“My dad was just trying to make sure that kangaroo stopped getting frisky with that lady.”
