Status
Habitat
Range
Group
Sleeps twenty hours a day because its food is mildly poisonous.
Eucalyptus leaves are fibrous, low in protein and loaded with terpenes and phenolics. Koalas process them with an enlarged caecum, a gut microbiome tuned to the local tree species, and a liver that detoxifies compounds most mammals cannot handle. The energy left over is minimal, which is what the long stillness is for — and it also means a koala moved to unfamiliar eucalypts may not be able to digest them.
The pressures are cumulative rather than singular: clearing for housing, road deaths, dog attacks, and chlamydial disease that causes blindness and infertility across much of the range. The 2019–20 fires burned a substantial share of eastern habitat, and in 2022 the New South Wales, Queensland and ACT populations were listed as Endangered nationally.
The open shelf
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