Koala
Phascolarctos cinereus
— Where the name comes from
Koala comes from an Aboriginal language of New South Wales, perhaps gula, often read as “does not drink”: the animal takes almost all its water from leaves. Phascolarctos is Greek for “pouched bear”, from pháskōlos, pouch, and árktos, bear — though it is no bear at all; cinereus, Latin, “ash-grey”.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Diprotodont marsupials
- Habitat
- Eucalyptus forest
- Range
- Eastern and south-eastern Australia
- Size
- 60–85 cm, 4–15 kg
- Diet
- A specialist herbivore — eucalyptus leaves
- Lifespan
- 13–18 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It eats nothing but eucalyptus, toxic and impoverished leaves it neutralises with a specialised liver.
- 02
It sleeps up to 20 hours a day to save the energy its diet denies it.
- 03
It has fingerprints all but indistinguishable from human ones, unique among marsupials.
— What sets it apart
Koala joeys are not born able to digest eucalyptus: before weaning the mother produces a special mush, a soft dropping called pap, which the young eats directly. With it come the gut bacteria needed to dismantle the toxins in the leaves. Without that unappetising meal it could not survive on the only food it will ever have: its own diet has, quite literally, to be inherited.
