Koalas, the Aussie-favourite. Only about one-hundred thousand Koalas live in Australia. They may be cute and soft. But their fur is as coarse as the sheep wool that hasn't been knitted and softened, it protects them from both heat & cold as it also helps to repel water like a raincoat. In fact, their fur is the thickest of all marsupials.
What are koalas?
Koalas are tree-dwelling marsupials, and the leaves are poisonous for humans, and when they sleep, they like fork-type trees so they can sleep comfortably. They like to stay in Trees and stay there most of the time. The word “Koalas” mean “no drink”, because of their ability to survive many days without water. They get their water from the Eucalyptus leaves as they eat it.
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If humans ate the leaves, they would be poisoned because it’s not very good for us. The oil found in the eucalyptus leaves causes several ailments from nausea (a feeling of sickness with an inclination to vomit) and vomiting, to irritation and skin redness... only Koalas and ring tail possums can eat eucalyptus leaves that doesn’t poison them, it naturally is okay for them to eat. It’s a special skill to have.
What do they look like?
Koalas have patches of white fur inside the ears, on their chin, chest and neck, inside the front limbs and sometimes on the back of the hind limbs (two back limbs of an animal), and usually in patches on their rump... The rump’s white speckled appearance makes Koalas harder to spot on the ground.
The fur on then also helps them protect themselves from heat, it can also be used as a raincoat to repel moisture when it rains. The fur varies in colours from light grey to brown
Where do they live?
Koalas live in the south-eastern and eastern Australia-in the states of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria-in the eucalyptus forests and woodlands. They live in eucalyptus trees and spend most of their time wedged between forks in the tree’s branches
But they do not make nests, these animals ranges that may overlap with those of other koalas, but mainly keep it to themselves. On scorching days, koalas literally fall out of trees. Ms Hosking’s research from the website https://www.independent.co.uk shows that temperatures above 37 degrees Celsius are intolerable for them. “Once you get over 37 degrees Celsius, there’s zero (0) probability of a koala.” she said.
If you're wondering WHY koalas hug so tightly to trees is because as temperatures climb, koalas move to cooler trees and go limp, like wet dishrags. Turns out their tree-hugging is a cooling mechanism. Koalas use trees like humans use air conditioning: to cool off, a new study shows... they stretch out, placing as much of their bodies as they can in contact with the trees.
What do they eat?
An adult koala eats between 200 to 500 grams of eaves every day. Koalas eat mainly eucalyptus leaves. Occasionally they will eat the leaves from some other native Australian trees, and they also use certain trees just for resting in. Koalas live in tall open eucalypt forests.
Caroline Monro, a wildlife main koala keeper from http://entertainment.nine.com.au confirmed koala joeys go through a poo-eating phrase when they’re about five or six months old, and that it’s as gross as it sounds... If a baby koala isn’t fed pap- if its mother is injured or abandons her joey-it can’t ever survive on eucalyptus leaves as an adult diet.
Some people think that koalas sleep a lot because they get drunk on the eucalyptus oil in gum leaves. THAT’S NOT TRUE!!
Koalas sleep or rest for up to 16-22 hours each day because their bodies need a lot of energy to digest the gum leaves and when they are sleeping, they save energy. Very few animals can survive on a diet of gum leaves. They are very fibrous and low in nutrition, and therefore they take a lot of energy to digest. As well, to almost all other animals they are poisonous. However, koalas are specially adapted to eat this diet.
What is their day to day behaviour?
(the nocturnal mammals sleep for up to 16-22 hours a day depending on what they’re doing. They are arboreal, meaning that they live in trees. They don’t live in big groups but rather prefer to be alone. As well as that, they sometimes eat at night!
Koalas are only active at night (known to be nocturnal animals for a eucalyptus-leave diet) during night, at dawn and dusk. This is because as they got cooled from the trees from shaded spots.
Koalas are some of Australian men and women's favourites to know, if a friend of yours doesn't know, read them this!
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