A very long hop

南華早報 | EDT8 | EDT | 2009-06-14

Concerning the "Great Flood", could Gordon Arthur ("Biblical maths explains how it was possible", June 7) please explain how kangaroos got to Australia from Mount Ararat?

Since they can neither fly nor swim, they must have gone overland through modern-day Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, a distance of some 14,000km. Given that the last 5,000km are made up of thousands of islands, is he suggesting that they "hopped" across? And where are the kangaroo colonies that one would expect to find along the way?

Perhaps he could also explain how kiwis (New Zealand), rheas (South America), bison (North America), and giant tortoises (Galapagos Islands) came to their indigenous locations?

Patrick Bateman, Mid-Levels