Unborn wallaby caught on camera

IT'S a wallaby, but not like one you've ever seen.

Australian scientists have for the first time videotaped a wallaby fetus - just 1.5mm in size - inside its mother's tummy.

The scientists, from Melbourne University, used a high-resolution ultrasound to capture the footage of the tiny creature three days before its birth.

The fetus, which weighs about 400mg, can be seen making climbing movements in the video as it rehearses from the trip into its mother's pouch.

It can be seen in the video making climbing movements about three days before birth, practising to climb to the pouch.

Professor Marilyn Renfree, from Melbourne University, said she was stunned by the footage even though she was part of the team that got it.

"It's incredible," Dr Renfree told AAP by phone.

"You can actually see it, and you don't have to have a great knowledge of ultrasonography to be able to understand what you're seeing."

She said the video was a breakthrough because it meant small creatures could now be observed in utero.

"What it shows is that we can actually measure even tiny, tiny foetuses in mammals which, until the recent past, nobody has been able to do," she said.

"Because marsupials are such a different branch of mammals they inform us in many ways as to how we develop.

"If we want to study development, all we have to do is open the pouch and have a look at the little fella."

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