Koalas live in the eucalyptus forests of southeastern and eastern Australia. They rely on the eucalyptus tree for both habitat and food. Koalas can eat more than a pound of eucalyptus leaves a day.
Tucked into forks or nooks in the trees, koalas may sleep for 18 to 22 hours. Koalas can even store leaves in their cheek pouches for later.
They eat so much eucalyptus that they often take on its smell. Koala numbers plummeted in the late 19th and early 20th century from hunting for their fur. Now they face serious threats from habitat loss. Land clearing, logging , and bushfires—especially the devastating season —have destroyed much of the forest they live in.
Koalas need a lot of space—about a hundred trees per animal—a pressing problem as Australia's woodlands continue to shrink. Koalas are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which has named the species one of 10 animals most vulnerable to climate change.
Increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is decreasing the nutritional quality of eucalyptus leaves which is already quite low and causing longer, more intense droughts and wildfires. In response to drought, koalas are forced to stop napping and come down from the trees to find water , spending precious energy and putting them at a higher risk of predation.
Predators include dingoes and large owls. Chlamydia is widespread in some koala populations and can cause blindness, infertility, and sometimes death. Koalas lost substantial portions of their habitat in the bushfire season and have been identified by the Australian government as one of animals requiring urgent help. Rough, ridged pads on the hands and feet aid their grip and give them traction. Strong arm and shoulder muscles help a koala climb feet 46 meters to the top of a tree and enable it to leap between branches in the trees.
Koalas are naturally solitary. They are most active at night and spend most of their time napping and eating. Koalas eat only eucalypt leaves. Koalas prefer the leaves of about three dozen varieties. Like many plants, eucalypts make certain toxic compounds as adaptations for avoiding being eaten.
But koalas seem to know their limits. Conservation scientists noted that koalas avoided certain plants seasonally. Analyses of the plants revealed higher-than-usual levels of certain toxins. Koalas grind the tough eucalypt leaves with their cheek teeth. They don't get many calories from their diet, but they conserve energy by moving occasionally and by sleeping as much as 20 hours each day.
At the San Diego Zoo, koalas are offered fresh branches from several kinds of eucalypts each day. These picky eaters can then select their favorite varieties. Our koalas eat 1 to 1. Female marsupials have a pouch in which they carry their baby , called a joey. Many marsupials, like kangaroos, have a pouch that opens upward, toward their head.
But koalas have a pouch that opens toward their hind legs. This adaptation keeps burrowing marsupials like wombats, which are close relatives of koalas, from getting dirt in their pouch when they dig. Although prehistoric koalas eventually stopped burrowing and started living in trees, they still have the primitive, back-facing pouch. A koala, like other marsupials, begins life in a very unusual way.
When it is born, it is only about the size of a large jelly bean and is not yet fully developed. In fact, a newborn joey can't even see or hear, but it sure can climb! Soon after the joey is born, it uses strong forelimbs and hands to crawl from the birth canal into its mother's pouch.
The joey attaches to one of two nipples in this warm, safe place where it drinks milk and grows during the next six months. Even after it starts leaving the pouch, a joey returns there when it wants to hide or sleep.
Sometimes it rides on its mother's belly. Koalas live all over eastern Australia and only eat one type of tree? Koalas in the You Yangs near Melbourne have been recorded eating every one of the 15 species of eucalypt gum tree in the park. Throughout Australia, the gum trees they eat number in the hundreds of species.
This myth may have started from some early scientific research that showed that koalas have a high preference for certain species of eucalyptus in certain regions.
That can be true in some places, but not in others. The rest of the time, they are in blue gums, yellow gums, ironbarks, sugar gums, red box, manna gums—you get the picture. Koalas are wild animals. Like most wild animals, they prefer to have no contact with humans at all.
Two independent scientific studies—a University of Melbourne study and a study —found that even captive koalas, born and raised in a zoo, experienced stress when humans approached too close to them. In the wild, Echidna Walkabout Nature Tours have found that 10 metres is the closest you should ever be to a koala.
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