Antar and the Kangaroo

When Antar learned from a storybook he was reading that kangaroos bring up their babies in special pouches on their stomachs, he asked himself in surprise, "Do any animals really have pouches?" The kangaroo in the book then suddenly started hopping around on the page, and answered: "You're right to be surprised, Antar. But, yes, we kangaroos really have a pouch on our tummies, and this is where we feed, protect and rear our babies."

Antar had a close look and saw a lovable baby kangaroo poking its head from its mother's pouch in the picture.

"How did your baby get into the pouch, I wonder?" he asked the mother, who replied:

"When a baby kangaroo is born it is only one centimeter long. That tiny baby, which is still undeveloped, reaches the pouch after a 3-minute journey."

"That's very interesting," mused Antar. "How do you feed it in there?"

The mother explained patiently: "There are four different milk teats in my pouch. In one of these teats there is a warm milk ready to feed the baby. In the other three teats is milk which is not to feed the newborn baby but babies which are a bit older. After a few weeks the baby will leave the teat it feeds from at the beginning and start feeding from one more suitable for its age. When it gets a little bigger it will move on to the next one."

"Unbelievable!" cried an excited Antar. "How does a baby kangaroo that is only one centimeter long know how which teat to choose from? And how do you, the mother kangaroo, manage to put such different kinds of milk into those four teats?"

The mother kangaroo went on to explain: "The milk that feeds a newborn baby is warmer than the other kinds. The nourishment it contains is different, too. How do you think we mother kangaroos heat the milk in our teats? Don't forget, dear Antar, that it really isn't the mother kangaroos who do all this. We don't even know about the differences in the milk in our teats. It isn't possible for us to calculate the temperature of the milk. Neither do we know that each type of milk has different characteristics, nor what food it contains. We just live the way Allah inspires us to. Allah, Who created us, thought out the needs of our babies. Our Lord, with His infinite compassion and mercy, gave our babies milk of the most suitable kind and placed them in the best place for them, in the pouches of their mothers."