• Koalas can sleep for up to 20 hours a day. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for anything else! This is because Eucalyptus leaves are not particularly nutritious, so energy is limited. ZZZZ! Like we always say, all the Koala does is sit there and look gorgeous, so why would anyone want to hurt them?

• When a Koala is born, it’s only the size of a jellybean. Yep, an itty bitty pink jellybean, in its mum’s pouch! 

•  If you look at the skeletal structure of the Koala, it shows that at some point in its evolutionary history an external tail was present. A Koala with a tail is hard to imagine! In saying that, Koalas have exceptionally good balance for an animal without a tail. 

(smccd.edu)

• The Koala’s teeth are adapted to deal with their specialised diet.. that is leaves, leaves and more leaves! The sharp front incisors nip the leaves from the tree. The molars, or back teeth are shaped to allow the Koala to cut and shear the leaves rather than just crush them. A gap between the incisors and the molars, called a ‘diastema’, allows the tongue to move the mass of leaves around the mouth efficiently. Mmm!

• Different species of eucalypts grow in different parts of Australia, so a Koala in Victoria would have a very different diet from one in Queensland. This is one of the reasons that relocation doesn’t work. You can imagine how boring it would be to eat the same thing every day. Koalas like a change too, and sometimes they will eat from other trees such as wattle, tea tree or paperbark. Yum!

• “Home range trees” define the boundaries of the individual Koala’s home range. They can be likened to surveyors’ pegs marking the extent of a property. They are not always apparent to the human eye, but our clever Koalas can tell whether a tree ‘belongs’ to another Koala or not.

(The Conversation)

• Koalas use a range of sounds to communicate with one another over relatively large distances. There is a deep grunting bellow, which the male uses to signify its social and physical position. It can be quite a surprising sound the first time you hear it! Instead of using energy to physically fight, male Koalas will bellow to show their dominance. Another sign of laziness perhaps? Just kidding. They also bellow to allow other animals to accurately locate their position. 

(Lesson Zone)

• Because Aboriginal tribes speak many different languages, they have different names for the Koala. Just a few of these names include: colo, koolah, boorabee, karbor, colah, kaola, burrenbong and koolewong. You can see that some of these names are a little similar to ‘Koala’.

• Although they can drink if they need to, Koalas do not often need to drink as they get most of the moisture they need from the leaves they eat, as well as from dew and rain.

(Flickr)

•    There’s an old legend that says Koalas have power over the rains, and that if people treat them with disrespect, there will be a big drought. Maybe there’s more truth to this than we realise!