An Unusual Bear

1-31-2007

What exotic newborn bear follows the salvia trail, its mother puts down, to make its way to a pouch on its parent’s back? This bizarre creature is the Koala Bear. Mostly concentrated in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia, this solitary tree-dweller lives clinging to the top branches of the Eucalyptus with its razor-sharp claws and powerful limbs. Although the adult’s diet consists only of Eucalyptus leaves for both food and liquid, the infant bear drinks its mother’s milk and half digested food past through the mom’s rectum. Beginning life at roughly the size of a lima bean the gray, fury and pudgy marsupial adult reaches a weight between seventeen and twenty-six pounds and a height of about two feet. Harsh and unattractive the nocturnal Koala’s call, sounding like sawing wood, could be a bit unnerving during a night time stroll. Koalas may look like average mammals, but they are truly unusual bears.