NEW YORK (AP) — The second baby of a tree-dwelling kangaroo made its first public appearance this week in New York, poking its pink head out of its mother’s furry white pouch.

The tiny Matschie’s tree-kangaroo, or Dendrolagus matschiei, was born in December and is the second child from the same mother since 2022. It was also the third of its species born at the Bronx Zoo since 2008.

The tree kangaroos are only pregnant for about six weeks before they give birth and immediately crawl into their marsupial mothers’ pouches, the zoo said in a statement. It takes about seven months for the young to begin peeking out of the pouch.

There are only about 2,500 tree kangaroos left in the wild and 42 in captivity, the zoo said. In a statement Friday, a Bronx Zoo spokesman said the kangaroo’s birth was significant for the zoo network, whose goal is to preserve the genetic diversity of endangered animals.

“It’s a small population, so births aren’t very common,” said Jessica Moody, curator of primates and small mammals at the Bronx Zoo. “So it’s a rare and exciting event,” adding that baby tree kangaroos “may be one of the cutest animals that ever lived. They look like stuffed animals, it’s incredible.”

The tree kangaroos are native to the Huon Peninsula in Papua New Guinea, where they are threatened by human activities such as habitat destruction and hunting, the statement said. They live mainly in trees and are smaller than Australia’s better-known red kangaroo. An adult tree kangaroo weighs between 9 and 11 kilograms. The young are about the size of a human thumb at birth, but grow to be up to 76 centimeters long.

Wildlife restoration programs often rely on zoos to ensure genetic diversity. For example, wolves reintroduced into the wild are often given young born in zoos to raise. This reduces the risk of inbreeding and increases populations in the wild.

Julie Walker and Cedar Attanasio, The Associated Press