Thursday, July 9, 2015

* 7/09/15 What do you MEAN I'm not a bear?


 Okay. I may or not have gone a month without updating... I feel really bad. I've been busy (ultimate excuse), but not so busy that I couldn't spare some time for a couple posts a week. Which is why I feel so bad. Anyway, this post is to make up for all the days I haven't posted, and hopefully I will begin posting regularly again!


Honestly, this a top koalaty post, as in for VIP only. Don't worry, you koalafy. However, why are Koala's not bears? I mean, they have all the koalaficatations. Okay... All these koala puns are getting unbearable...

On a more serious note, they really aren't bears, so I have my doubts about the person that named them. The Koala bear,  Phascolarctos cinereus, is a marsupial, not a bear, as you may already know. When born, the baby koala--or joey--is the size of a jelly, and is blind, hairless, and deaf. This tiny creature makes it's way to it's mother's pouch all on it's own! Like all marsupials, a Koala mother comes equipped with a handy pouch on her stomach, so the newborn joey can stay swaddled up, safe and cozy, for six whole months.

After that life of luxury, the infant emerges, and spends approximately another six months clinging to it's mothers back and having little escapades on it's own. A day in the life of a joey would consist of 18 hours of sleep, waking up, suckling, then as it gets older feeding on faecal pap--which is, in a sense, specialized poop (a specialized kind, that is actually very nutritious for the joey)--then at last leaving it's mother around the age of year when his mother has another joey to take care of.

Once it is on it's own, a koala has to find it's own territory, where it can hopefully start a new generation of Koala's living wild in Australia. Of course, from here on it's life isn't easy. Over 10 koala's die each day under the wheels of cars, dogs, and habitat loss. That's around 4,000 each year!

These amazing creatures, although not bears, are just as fascinating.


Sorry little guy, but you don't.. Koala's are in a completely different order of classification then bears, belonging to the order Diprotodontia, while bears are in Carnivora--yes, Koala's aren't even carnivores! Instead, they feed entirely on eucalyptus leaves. That's a big difference in two similar looking species.