Koala - Phascolarctos cinereus

The last post on Greater Gliders got me thinking about appendices and how as an animal, a glider's is really long, but it's interesting enough that people still study it. In that sense, whoever designed Australian animals is some creation-equivalent of J.R.R. Tolkien. And Koalas fall into that whole canon. Koalas have an extremely long appendix - so long, they had to shorten its name, into 'caecum'.

It is the job of the caecum to bring to full fruition the pooeyness (read: 'digestion') of Eucalyptus leaves in the Koala's digestive system. At two metres long, the Koala's caecum is enormous. You could lasso a small horse or whip your child with it. It is filled with bacteria with digestive enzymes stronger than the Koala's, which break down the Koala's diet of Eucalyptus leaves. This feeds the bacteria and releases more easily digested nutrients for the Koala's lower gut to then absorb. The Koala, acting as some purveyor of dietary riches, stays rich, but with each further gorging, the street cretin-like bacteria get slightly more leafy goodness. So it happens that any overflow from the koala increases the wealth of the bacteria, just as long as the koala is kept full in the first place. Just more proof for the worth of Trickle-Down Economics.

The Koala eats the nutritional equivalent of bitcoin. It's so nutritionally worthless that koalas are left with almost no energy to explore passions beyond just finding comfortable forks in branches to sleep in and falling on people mythologically. Airlie, pictured above, is a poster child for Koalas in the Cleveland region of Toondah. She found that it's hard to pursue her interests in croquet and computer engineering when she only has enough energy to be awake for 5 hours a day (generous for a Koala - an average Koala is active for 4 hours daily). As an aside, it's evidently pretty crippling, because Airlie's been so unable to invest time into her interests that when she said 'croquet' in the interview, she pronounced the 't'. By the time she finally finds out she's been saying it so wrong to so many people, she's going to blush so hard her cheeks bleed internally.

Koalas are currently seriously threatened nationally and in Queensland by habitat loss and fragmentation, disease, and feral predation. Loss of good feed trees both means they're not able to get the Sultana-Bran-nutritious start to the day that they need to really seize all opportunities presented to them, but they also are homeless (which is stevely a comparable problem to not having Sultana Bran). So, if you have gum trees on your property, or if there are parks nearby where Koala trees occur, keep them there. Be the PCYC of conservation and help these Koalas follow their passions. Or at least help them to pronounce them properly.

Special thanks to Chris Walker for helping me to find these Toondah Koalas.