Mascots of war.

The article reports on the smuggling of kangaroos by members of the 9th and 10th battalions of the Australian Imperial Force from home aboard transport ships en route to Egypt in 1914, according to Peter Stanley, principal historian at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Other soldiers brought wallabies, koalas and possums. When the soldiers left for Gallipoli, the mascots were bequeathed to the care of the Cairo Zoological Garden, now part of the Giza Zoo. Kangaroos were also smuggled during the Boer War in South Africa from 1899 to 1902.