ABC Wednesday, K for Koala

The koala is a marsupial. The female has a pouch, where her tiny, hairless baby grows, after the mother has given birth and helped it crawl into the pouch. Inside the pouch the baby finds a nipple. It stays attached to the nipple until it
has grown fur and can see. After seven months, the baby starts to climb out of the pouch and wanders around in the vicinity of its mother. A koala spends most of its time asleep in forks of gum trees. It eats leaves of the gum tree, lots of it because they don't give much energy. Koalas live in eastern Australia where they depend on the gum trees( eucalypts).The koala has two thumps on each front paw.This helps the koala to grip onto the trunks of trees easily
The koala is only found in Australia. A female koala can breed at two years of age, while the male can breed at the age of five, after he has found a home range. The time between mating and birth is about 35 years."

I am sorry to say that I didn't see koalas myself, except in zoos of course. So these photos were taken from a book I bought in Australia.


With thanks to Denise Nesbitt, who created ABC.We started round 8 of the fascinating meme of ABC. For more interesting ABC posts click on the logo in the sidebar or Here. This week we are looking for words beginning with K.

I got these photos by e-mail!

It is not common for a Koala to bear twins and, regrettably
in this instance, the Mum was struck and killed by a passing car.

Fortunately, the driver stopped, and took the mother to the
local vet, not knowing she was dead, - where it was soon discovered that she had these twins in her pouch.
First photo: Tiny Koala being fed with syringe...so tiny!!
Followed by a pictorial chronology of their growth...