I realized tonight that I am starting to get too many Wild Facts as I am now having a tough time remembering which animals I have already talked about. You know I don’t want to repeat the same fact over and over again. I can’t believe that I haven’t done a Wild Fact on the Koala Bear. That is enough of my babbling, lets get on with the fact!
The Koala Bear isn’t actually a bear. In fact the closest living relative of the koala bear is the……are you ready for it? The Wombat! That’s right, Wild Fact #874 and #873 are actually related. Just like the wombat and the kangaroo, the koala bear is a marsupial. You remember what the means right? I don’t want you to have to go back to yesterday’s fact to look up the definition so I will remind you. A marsupial gives birth to live young just like other mammals but then the young hops into the comfy pouch where it continues to grow. The baby (also called a Joey) is only about a quarter of an inch long when it heads to the pouch. It will stay in this external shelter for about 6 months feeding solely on milk. Interestingly enough the pouch of the koala bear contains a drawstring-like muscle that the mama bear can close and open at will. To me that is a pretty cool way to ensure your little joey doesn’t fall out.
The koala bear feeds primarily on Eucalyptus leaves, which are low in protein, hard to digest and contain chemicals that are deadly to most other animals. So why do they feed on such problematic leaves? Simply because other animals can’t suvive off of these leaves, so it ensures food availability. The koala bear has a very low metabolic rate which allows them to be able to survive off of such low quality leaves. Due to this low metabolism, the koala bear tends to laze around for about 16-18 hours a day. If you ask me, they are living the dream life! I wish my job was just to sleep all day!
Koala Bear Fast Fact: The fingerprints of the koala bear are incredibly similar to humans. Apparently, it is even difficult to distinguish the two apart using an electron microscope. This is an unverified fact but an interesting one to think about.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
Hmmmm…wonder if you could teach a Koala to pull off a bank heist? Sure would keep the cops busy for a really long time *grin*.
Sidebar here: I cannot comment or drop on you anymore from the Opera browser (I had to switch to Firefox to leave this one). In Opera, everything on the site goes to the “contact” page and then gets stuck. I couldn’t leave a message for you that way though, as clicking in the box would only cause the contact page to refresh. It started about 4 days ago (thought you might want to know in case your drops were dwindling :o)
Thanks a lot for the heads up. I will try to get it fixed tonight but I am not sure what the problem is with Opera and Wild Facts. Again, I really appreciate you letting me know. I always us Firefox so I don’t see some of these glitches.
Have a great night!
This is the main reason I read wild-facts.com. Awesome posts.