- Koala bear - (Phascolarctos cinereus) -

- Description-

Calling a koala a "bear" is almost like calling "tiger" a cat, despite its appearance is just that of a little bear, with a inoffensive appearance that has always arouse tenderness and sympathy in most of people. In any case, koala is neither a little bear, but a Marsupial, like all the mammals of the original Australian fauna.

A Koala is 60-85 cm long, for 5-7 kg of weight, with a big and round head, wide, round and furry ears, little eyes and a flat nude nose. Another feature of this animal is that it has no tail.

Its fur is grey, except for on the abdomen that is white-yellow, soft and long. Given its diet, only based on eucalypt leaves, Koalas spend among the leaves of these trees most of their life so that their fur always smells of eucalypt oil and this keeps them free from every kind of parasite.

Its legs have 5 prehensile fingers with sharp claws for better climbing and moving along its favourite trees, but it's a very sedentary animal that spends about 4 hours to eat about 0.5 Kg/day of eucalypt leaves. For the remaining time, the koala spends all the time resting or sleeping always on the same tree and it can change it only when this doesn't fit anymore with its food needs.

-Diet-

As already mentioned, koala diet is only based on eucalypt leaves and gems and only some species of these trees are good for its diet, so that the reforestation programs performed in Australia, to ease koalas' survival, have planted just these particular species.

Its chewing is extremely long and accurate to reduce these hard leaves to a very fine pastry, for a more efficient digestion. Just for this purpose, when the koala temporarily abandons its tree, it's mainly to eat some soil, little stones and bark.

The main problem for a koala is that eucalypt leaves are scarcely nutrient, very scarce in proteins and fats but rich in terpenic oils and poly-phenols that result toxic for all other animals; the koala neutralizes these substances thanks to a particular adaptation of its liver and to a particularly long caecum intestine. The koala lives with this diet but it can't obtain much energies, despite the chemical miracles of its digestive system and, just for this reason, it must spend 4/5 of its daytime resting and sleeping.

-Reproduction-

Koala males are the most active for reproduction and they put into practice a determined court to the female that, as usual, doesn't allow her favour too easily to the first guy

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

---

Add your voice

Know something about Animal facts: Koala bear?
We want to hear your view. Write now!