A wallaby is an Australian animal that looks like a small kangaroo. It has strong back legs, jumps to move around, stands up on its back legs and tail, and the mother carries her baby in a pocket of skin on her front. "Wallaby" and "kangaroo" are not two names for the same thing, and they are not really mother and baby either — they are different animals in the same family, and the main difference people use is size. Kangaroos are big; a big male kangaroo can be taller than a man. Wallabies are much smaller, and many kinds are about the size of a dog or a large cat. There is no clear line between them: scientists say "wallaby" for the smaller members of the family, and the word covers many different kinds of animal, not one. You see wallabies in the wild in Australia and New Guinea, and some live wild in New Zealand and in a few parts of Britain, because animals escaped from parks long ago and stayed. The word is a normal everyday one — Australians use it in ordinary talk, on road signs, and in the news. Two other places you will meet it: the Australian national rugby team is called the Wallabies, and "wallaby" is sometimes used loosely by people outside Australia for any small kangaroo-like animal they cannot name exactly.