Koala Bear
What is teddy bear? Everybody knows it is a small young bear (Baby of a bear). But in reality, Teddy bear is a very famous lovely doll. Small body, great hard nose, big hairy ears, very soft and smooth skin made of fur – These are characteristics of a lovely teddy bear doll.
But imagine, do all these characteristics resemble a young bear in reality? Answer is - No. But there is an animal, which is very similar to these teddy bear toys. Many people do not know this animal. This is called “Koala”. Due to similarities to teddy bear, this is called Koala Bear.
Koala Bear is an animal that can be found only in Australia. It is as famous as Kangaroo in Australia. Koala bear is a ‘Marsupial’ mammal like Kangaroo. What is Marsupial mammal? Marsupial mammals are animals in which females carry their young ones in a distinctive pouch. Compared to other mammals, in marsupial mammals, babies will born very early. The early birth of a baby, results in greater environmental risks to baby. So mother will keep her baby in her pouch and protects the baby until it is well grown. Baby koala will be there in the pouch for almost six months only feeding on milk.
Koala Bear appears like large teddy bear toys with great dark nose, big hairy ears, very soft and smooth skin made of fur. They measure between 61 and 85 cm and weight between 4 and 14 kgs.
Koala Bear is a very strange animal. It lives only on Eucalyptus tree. It never lives on any other trees. And also it will never come down to earth in its lifetime! Then what they eat? They eat only Eucalyptus leaves! They never eat anything other than Eucalyptus leaves. Its body has fragrance of Eucalyptus oil. And also they are very lazy animals. They sleep for almost 20 hours a day. That means they carry out other physical activities only for four hours a day! So the digestion process inside the digestive system of a koala bear is very slow.
Eucalyptus leaves are poisonous. It has a toxic element called ‘cineol’. Animals can die if they eat Eucalyptus leaves. But koala bear has got a special digestive system. This system deactivates poisonous components from Eucalyptus leaves and absorbs only nutritional components from leaves. Koala bear its almost 1 kg of Eucalyptus leaves daily.
Koala bears are harmless animals. Unfortunately, today they are less in numbers. Once upon a time they were in millions in population. But man has killed them for fur and skin. Now they are only in thousands in population. Government of Australia and people of Australia have taken proper steps to protect them from extinction. They are emotionally attached with Koala bears.
(Courtesy : An half an hour program on Koala Bears in National Geographic Channel)
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