Gibson’s World

Koalas are one of my favorite animals.  A newborn koala is the size of a bean, weighs 1/2 gram, and is only 2 cm. long.  An adult Victorian koala usually weighs from 17-26 lbs. and a Queensland koala usually weighs from 11-15 lbs.  When a baby koala is born, it stays attached to a nipple for 13 weeks and opens its eyes after 22 weeks.  The baby koala comes out of its mother’s pouch after one year.   

An adult male is 50% heavier than a female adult.  During one day, a koala will spend just under 20 hours sleeping, four hours eating or grooming, and 1% changing trees, climbing, or finding a mate.  When a koala eats, first it picks a eucalyptus leave and puts it in its mouth.  Then, it grinds the leaf up with its molars before swallowing it.   Koalas are one of the only animals that eat eucalyptus, because it is so poisonous. Since the koala eats eucalyptus, a poisonous leaf, it doesn’t have much energy.

When a koala is in a tree while it’s raining, it will curl up in a ball and let the rain run off its condensed and waterproof fur.  They will also curl up in a ball to keep warm. The koala’s hands are unusual because they have 5 fingers and 2 thumbs. They are also interesting because they aren’t really bears.

In Australia, I have seen a bunch of koalas so far in the wild and in the zoo and they are really cool to see!!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 3:38 am and is filed under Oceania. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.