Koala facts - All about koalas.

Each koala's ‘home' is made up of several trees called home trees, and they visit these same trees regularly. Each koala has its own home range, which overlaps those of other koalas but except for breeding purposes, they do not visit another koala's home trees. The size of each home range depends upon a range of factors including the quality of the habitat and the sex, age and social position in the population of the koala.

Koalas do not live in rainforests or desert areas. They live in the tall eucalypt forests and low eucalypt woodlands of mainland eastern Australia and on some islands off the southern and eastern coasts. Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia are the only states where koalas are found naturally in the wild.

KOALA FACTS Koalas are not bears. They are MARSUPIALS, which means that their young are born immature & they develop further in the safety of a pouch. Koalas have 5 digits on each front paw, two of which are opposed to the others, much like our thumbs are able to be moved differently from the fingers. This helps them to hold firmly onto the branches and to grip their food. The 2nd and 3rd digits on their hind paws are fused together to form a grooming claw. Koalas are mostly nocturnal. Nocturnal animals are awake at night and asleep during the day. Koalas, however, sleep for part of the night and also sometimes move about in the daytime. They often sleep for up to 18 hours each day. There is a myth that koalas sleep a lot because they ‘get drunk' on gum leaves. Fortunately, this is not correct! Most of their time is spent sleeping because it requires a lot of energy to digest their toxic, fibrous, low-nutrition diet and sleeping is the best way to conserve energy. Koalas in the southern parts of Australia are considerably larger and have thicker fur than those in the north. This is thought to be an adaptation to keep them warm in the colder southern winters. A mature male has a dark scent gland in the centre of his white chest, which exudes a dark sticky substance. He rubs this on his trees to indicate to other koalas that this is his territory Koalas also communicate with each other by making a range of noises. The most startling and unexpected of these in such a seemingly gentle animal is a sound like a loud snore and then a belch, known as a ‘bellow'.

KOALA LIFE CYCLE Younger breeding females usually give birth to one joey each year, depending on a range of factors. However, not all females in a wild population will breed each year. Some, especially older females, will produce offspring only every two or three years. Koala young are known as ‘joeys'; scientists often refer to them using terms like ‘juveniles', ‘pouch young', and ‘back young'. When the joey is born, it's only about 2 centimetres long, is blind and furless and its ears are not yet developed. On its amazing journey to the pouch, it relies on its well-developed senses of smell and touch, its strong forelimbs and claws, and an inborn sense of direction. In the pouch, it attaches itself to one of the two teats which swells in its mouth, preventing it from being dislodged from its source of food. The joey stays in its mother's pouch for about 6 or 7 months, drinking only milk. Before it can tolerate gumleaves which are toxic for most mammals, the joey must feed on a substance called ‘pap', which is a specialised form of the mother's droppings that is soft and runny. This allows the mother to pass on to the joey special micro-organisms from her intestine which are necessary for it to be able to digest the gum leaves. It feeds on this for a period of up to a few weeks, just prior to it coming out of the pouch at about 6 or 7 months of age. After venturing out of the pouch, the joey rides on its mother's abdomen or back, although it continues to return to her pouch for milk until it is too big to fit inside. The joey leaves its mother's home range between 1 and 3 years old, depending on when the mother has another joey. Koalas are fully grown by their third or fourth year. By this time they need to have found their own home range, either in a home range left vacant by a dead koala or in a new area of the forest. This is one reason why koalas need quite large areas of habitat.