The Koala - Australia's Other Signature Animal

The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, just thirty-five minutes from Brisbane, is home to Kangaroos, Possums, Wombats and Koalas. Here you can snuggle up to a Koala and take a great photo.  Although the kangaroo is known as Australia famous animal, the koala is its other famous animal. At times you will hear it referred to as a koala bear, however it is not related to a bear at all. The word koala is adapted form the aboriginal word meaning no drink. Koalas do not need to drink as they get all their nutrition from a diet of eucalyptus leaves. A koalas hands are designed for climbing, and each koala has his or her own home tree which is not visited by other koalas except during mating season.

This attractive, yet slothful, animal sleeps in the daytime. They have beautiful fur, which they have been persecuted for in the past when hundreds of thousands of koala skins were exported annually. Today their are protective laws to keep the koalas safe. Although they can not be protected from everything and often fall victim to , diseases, predators such as cats and dogs, and bush fires.

Biologists have announced that koalas have brains that do not fit their skulls. Instead, they have a shriveled walnut sized brain that rattles around in a fluid filled cranium. Koalas have sacrificed their brains for energy efficiency, since the gum leaves that they eat are toxic and it take 20% of their energy to remove these toxins from their system.

They produce one young a year, a female koala is pregnancy for only 35 days before giving birth; most of the Joeys growth and development takes place in the mothers pouch .After the joey has been in the pouch for about 6 months, its mother begins to produce a substance known as pap which the joey feeds on as well as the milk its already getting. Pap contains bacteria the joey will need so that it can digest an adult diet of eucalyptus leaves. At about seven months the joey leaves the pouch but returns to it to nurse, finally leaving at about one year old. As a footnote " despite anything Australians tell you about Koalas AKA drop bears, there is absolutely no risk of one falling on your head as you walk beneath the trees!!!!

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