16 Let’s Talk Trash! MAR / APR 2019
©2019 The Keenan Group, Inc
THE KOALA The koala is an arboreal herbivorous (tree leaf eating) marsupial native to Australia.
A bear or not a bear?
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/12/koalas-are-not-a- type-of-bear/
While Koala’s may look cuddly, they are NOT. Their fur is not soft and fluffy like it appears, but rather has more of the consistency of wool. So snuggling with a Koala would feel like snuggling with sheep, only Koalas have long claws and incredibly strong grips. They are very solitary animals, preferring to be by themselves most of the time. Another myth surrounding Koala’s is that they sleep most of the day because they are intoxicated by the eucalyptus leaves they eat. In fact, they simply have very slow metabolisms and it takes a long time for their bodies to process these leaves, which are normally poisonous to most animals. Also, given that they almost exclusively eat eucalyptus leaves, this tends to introduce very little caloric and nutritional value into their diet. So they have to sleep nearly 20 hours a day to conserve energy to allow time for their bodies to digest the eucalyptus leaves.
Koala “bears” aren’t a type of bear at all. They are simply “Koalas”. So if they aren’t a member of the bear family, what are they? They are marsupials , along with kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, and possums, among others. Marsupials have the distinctive feature of a pouch, called a “marsupium”. Unlike most marsupials though, a female Koala’s pouch opens downward, rather than upward. The name “Koala Bear” is thought to come from English speaking settlers around the 18th century. They frequently would name new animals they saw based on what animal it looked like that they were familiar with. Around this same time, Koalas were also often referred to as “tree-bear”, “sloth”, “monkey-bear”, and other such names by these same settlers.
Koalas don’t often drink water, as they get moisture from eucalyptus leaves. Phascolarctidaea- (comes from the Greek word for “pouch”) is a family of marsupials in the order Diprotodontia, native to Australia and possessing vestigial tails. There is a single living genus and species. The Diprotodontia Phascolarctos cinereus, the koala are an order of about 125 species of marsupial mammals including the kangaroos, wallabies, possums, koala, wombats.
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