Here's hoping koalas get the protection they deserve and rebound from this. Heartbreaking.
Koalas are adorable and beloved. Imagine how many less obvious (or "gross") species in similar situations don't get articles written about them. That koala populations can plummet this far should be a clarion call about the state of things.
Many animals eat poop for various reasons. For some because it's important to their digestive process (rabbits). For some, because of less important reasons (dogs).
It's not only cattle that get inoculated that way, yours truly was similarly inoculated in that manner. I won't go into vivid specifics except to say that when a toddler my horrified mother rushed me to hospital after I had eaten unmentionables off the street left by our four-legged brethren.
I survived unscathed and asthma fee - a good test of the 'too much hygiene hypothesis' methinks. ;-)
Don't reckon they're much different to other Australian wildlife and they're not cuddly like they appear or as many people like to make out.
From time to time when I was a kid my parents and relatives used to take me to places where one could cuddle them and I can tell you they're not very cuddly at all.
We tend to anthropomorphize cute animals with big eyes and I reckon that's not good for conservation overall as the ugly get less attention. Moreover, how animals appear isn't a good indicator of their nature. Another well-known example is the loris, it looks really cute but it's a very bad idea to pick one up as you'll get jabbed by its poisoned barb.
Best thing to do is to just look and leave them be. Koalas aren't the only animals suffering habitat loss, many are and it's a huge problem.
> From time to time when I was a kid my parents and relatives used to take me to places where one could cuddle them and I can tell you they're not very cuddly at all
+1. Would not cuddle. Australia's minister of tourism one famously proclaimed that the koala is "flea-ridden, it piddles on you, it stinks and it scratches."[4]
Fun Fact: The eucalyptus that Koalas eat is a narcotic and the Koalas spend most of their lives in a drugged out stuppor[2]. Baby Koalas eat their mother's feces[1]. They sleep 18 hours a day. They have a strong musky odor. They also suffer from Chlamydia[3] and many parasites. They are nature's hippies.
More seriously, all of these are evolved traits. E.g. the feces is eaten to acquire the microbes necessary to breakdown the Eucalyptus leaf. The 18 hours of sleeping is because those leaves don't have a lot of caloric content. Rather than being an evolutionary dead end in the traditional sense, their biggest problem is loss of habitat, road accidents, and encounters with dogs. I prefer the world with koalas rather than the world without, but would not cuddle or touch them them.
People injure themselves panicking around Australian Magpies, far more than anything Magpies directly do. Just avoid their space for a few weeks when they are protective, and otherwise they are very sweet. If you must be in their space (i.e. you live there), invest in feeding them (not cat food!), and your main problem will be the singing gets annoying as they follow you around waiting for snacks :)
You're oversimplify it. You don't know where they are until they are already swooping you. They've drawn blood on me before when I was walking from my car into work. They are a menace for cyclists. A woman tripped over recently when being attacked by a magpie. She was carrying her baby. The baby died.
Sure, if you know exactly where they are on a regular route you might be able to avoid them by taking a different route.
"People injure themselves panicking around Australian Magpies, far more than anything Magpies directly do." sounds just like victim-blaming.
In comparison, koalas just stay in their trees when you walk past.
Of course I'm generalising because the majority of magpies don't swoop and I like hearing their songs. But there are plenty of overly aggressive magpies that do real harm.
I know Koalas being stupid is a meme at this point, but I always try to post this counter pasta when I see these claims. Koalas aren't any more "stupid" than any other animal, they occupy an ecological nieche and do it well:
so many other species do too, they garner no sympathy because they aren't cute to humans.
an alien species will come to this planet and wonder why all remaining species have big eyes, big foreheads and tiny limbs and realize they all have a symbiotic relationship with human's visual cortex and oxycotin production
There are plenty of videos on YouTube of wild koalas interacting with humans, sometimes having invaded people's houses apparently motived by curiosity. It seems to me that koalas are a lot more intelligent than you might expect from their lifestyle. They are closely related to wombats, of course, which have a more exciting lifestyle, so perhaps their intelligence is something left over from the past which they no longer really need and which is now, presumably, gradually decreasing.
But intelligence is very subjective. Perhaps a sloth is more intelligent than it seems at first sight. Perhaps you just need a lot of patience to observe its intelligence.
Besides random YouTube videos, there's "Izzy's koala world" on Netflix! Five stars: * * * * *
Its going down the path of whichever genes are around before reproducing. The outcome is that they have smooth brains, poor senses and no ability to adapt when their favorite tree gets cut down but others are 50 meters away.
No. Koalas nor Kangaroos are not considered pests. That's absurd. One is conserved due to their slow reproduction patterns, the other is hunted due to their thriving reproduction patterns.
The extensive bushfires and droughts are definitely big factors.
I worked briefly for a forestry in rural Victoria, where we would encounter koalas somewhat frequently where we would plant trees, These are lots that would be planted completely and years later cut and burned.
Wonder what would be also the effects of this on them and wildlife in general.When I have seen Koalas in the wild they seemed very apathetic- saw one stay at the very top of a blue-gum (which famously can shed huge pieces without much warning) even during a storm.
Can confirm. My gf volunteered in the Koala sanctuary in Port Macquarie, and there's a huge chlamydia epidemic amongst the Koala population. Also ticks, lots of ticks. Had to pick them off her with tweezers every evening she came back from the place.
This is true; it shouldn't be downvoted. There is, seriously, this terrible koala chlamydia that's going around, causing them severe pain, and rendering them infertile. There's a vet show on some nature TV channel where they try to treat wild animals in distress -- I think it's in Australia; I think it's run by Steve Irwin's family -- and there was definitely an episode with a koala with a seriously nasty case of chlamydia. I forget if it was a male or a female; whatever it was it had some kind of painfully inflamed, pink and distended genitals poking out of its fur, and, if I remember correctly, the inflammation was so bad that it couldn't urinate properly and was probably going to end up dying without treatment. It's really nasty.
Downvotes are for comments that don't add to discussion, not for comments that are disagreed with. (For example, this comment I'm writing is off-topic for the current article, and so should probably be downvoted.)
Stating a simple fact with no sources and no discussion is not a good HN comment. Ignoring your first sentence, your comment is really good.
The official numbers from the survey but no explanation of the methodology. Would be keen to know if these are reported sightings or some other mechanism
This is actually one of my favorite idiosyncratic policy initiatives. They are a pretty safe invasive species since they have only one food source that is already invasive, and as an added benefit, the Koalas would eat the leaves of Eucalyptus trees, reducing the fire risk.
> the Koalas would eat the leaves of Eucalyptus trees, reducing the fire risk
Sadly that won’t work. Koalas hardly make a dent in the consumption of eucalyptus trees. And on top of that, mature Eucalyptus leaves are extremely dry, so koalas will only eat the youngest shoots. So if they had any impact on the trees, it would be making them more flammable, not less.
Honestly, except for massive preservation efforts, Koalas are probably going to where Dodos went before them.
But not to worry, they'll be in very good company. The predatory ecosystem exploitation we've been living and breathing for quite some time now has put incredible strains on our whole life support system. Biological systems are amazingly resilient and this resilience has hidden much of the damage that has accumulated.
Unfortunately this has just made us disregard many of the warning signs that are flashing in front of our eyes. Food webs are collapsing, ecosystems get more and more fragmented and with increased fragmentation, failure in one part cannot be compensated for in another part.
Koalas are cute, so they get the publicity. That's good I guess. But let's not pretend that it's only koalas.
56 comments
[ 0.99 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadhttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-30/killing-koalas-90-yea...
Koalas are adorable and beloved. Imagine how many less obvious (or "gross") species in similar situations don't get articles written about them. That koala populations can plummet this far should be a clarion call about the state of things.
Mirror: https://archive.is/cZkdM
They are an evolutionary dead end and actually nasty, nasty creatures.
I survived unscathed and asthma fee - a good test of the 'too much hygiene hypothesis' methinks. ;-)
From time to time when I was a kid my parents and relatives used to take me to places where one could cuddle them and I can tell you they're not very cuddly at all.
We tend to anthropomorphize cute animals with big eyes and I reckon that's not good for conservation overall as the ugly get less attention. Moreover, how animals appear isn't a good indicator of their nature. Another well-known example is the loris, it looks really cute but it's a very bad idea to pick one up as you'll get jabbed by its poisoned barb.
Best thing to do is to just look and leave them be. Koalas aren't the only animals suffering habitat loss, many are and it's a huge problem.
+1. Would not cuddle. Australia's minister of tourism one famously proclaimed that the koala is "flea-ridden, it piddles on you, it stinks and it scratches."[4]
Fun Fact: The eucalyptus that Koalas eat is a narcotic and the Koalas spend most of their lives in a drugged out stuppor[2]. Baby Koalas eat their mother's feces[1]. They sleep 18 hours a day. They have a strong musky odor. They also suffer from Chlamydia[3] and many parasites. They are nature's hippies.
More seriously, all of these are evolved traits. E.g. the feces is eaten to acquire the microbes necessary to breakdown the Eucalyptus leaf. The 18 hours of sleeping is because those leaves don't have a lot of caloric content. Rather than being an evolutionary dead end in the traditional sense, their biggest problem is loss of habitat, road accidents, and encounters with dogs. I prefer the world with koalas rather than the world without, but would not cuddle or touch them them.
[1] https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/controversial-science-heal...
[2] https://adventuressetravels.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/drug-ad...
[3] https://www.livescience.com/62517-how-koalas-get-chlamydia.h...
[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/05/22/f...
"Yea, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."
They're not the only ones.
Magpies are much worse. I don't know anyone who hasn't been swooped by one.
Sure, if you know exactly where they are on a regular route you might be able to avoid them by taking a different route.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-09/qld-baby-dies-after-m...
"People injure themselves panicking around Australian Magpies, far more than anything Magpies directly do." sounds just like victim-blaming.
In comparison, koalas just stay in their trees when you walk past.
Of course I'm generalising because the majority of magpies don't swoop and I like hearing their songs. But there are plenty of overly aggressive magpies that do real harm.
https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/cxxn0z/koalas_ar...
an alien species will come to this planet and wonder why all remaining species have big eyes, big foreheads and tiny limbs and realize they all have a symbiotic relationship with human's visual cortex and oxycotin production
We just don't do a good job of protecting anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambi_effect
Also, similarly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charismatic_megafauna
But intelligence is very subjective. Perhaps a sloth is more intelligent than it seems at first sight. Perhaps you just need a lot of patience to observe its intelligence.
Besides random YouTube videos, there's "Izzy's koala world" on Netflix! Five stars: * * * * *
Go stare at a picture of Earth floating in space for a while. You aren't center to anything and understand very little.
Press F to pay respects.
"This is it, this is a countdown to extinction"
Wonder what would be also the effects of this on them and wildlife in general.When I have seen Koalas in the wild they seemed very apathetic- saw one stay at the very top of a blue-gum (which famously can shed huge pieces without much warning) even during a storm.
Wonderful recreation activity, I would venture!
Stating a simple fact with no sources and no discussion is not a good HN comment. Ignoring your first sentence, your comment is really good.
Their answer was "Koalas have chlamydia."
How does this not add to the discussion? And this doesn't need a source, that fact is well understood but not obvious to everyone reading this thread.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/12v1undbbi6x9ez/AKFestimates_2021....
Sadly that won’t work. Koalas hardly make a dent in the consumption of eucalyptus trees. And on top of that, mature Eucalyptus leaves are extremely dry, so koalas will only eat the youngest shoots. So if they had any impact on the trees, it would be making them more flammable, not less.
We are next.
Guess some people's really don't like animals and the urge to show that is strong.
But not to worry, they'll be in very good company. The predatory ecosystem exploitation we've been living and breathing for quite some time now has put incredible strains on our whole life support system. Biological systems are amazingly resilient and this resilience has hidden much of the damage that has accumulated.
Unfortunately this has just made us disregard many of the warning signs that are flashing in front of our eyes. Food webs are collapsing, ecosystems get more and more fragmented and with increased fragmentation, failure in one part cannot be compensated for in another part.
Koalas are cute, so they get the publicity. That's good I guess. But let's not pretend that it's only koalas.
It's everything.