Infant koalas - joeys - emerge from their mothers’ pouches at about six months of age; they then travel around on her back for a further six months.
Tag Archive for 'koala'
Koala conservation is actually something I have posted about here repeatedly and it is good to see that someone is getting of the global warming band wagon to promote real conservation:
Victoria’s Secret beauty Miranda Kerr has posed naked on the cover of
Rolling Stone. To be more precise. the nude photo of Miranda Kerr is on the cover of the Australian issue of Rolling Stone. The stunning Miranda Kerr posed nude on the cover of Rolling Stone to raise awareness about environmental issues in general and the plight of the koalas in particular. “Something like 80 percent of the koalas’ habitat has been destroyed since Europeans arrived in Australia,” says Miranda Kerr.To my way of thinking there is nothing particularly abhorrent about posing semi-nude for a good cause. And saving the adorable koala bear is most definitely a worthy cause. So
kudos to Miranda Kerr for using her beauty in a socially responsible way. [Associated Content]
I haven’t read the magazine article, but judging from this above article Kerr understands that the loss of the koalas natural habitat due to land clearing is what has greatly reduced the number of koalas in the Australian bush. This fact hasn’t stopped the usual suspects to claim global warming is killing koalas. Despite the claims from the eco-loons according to the Australian Koala Foundation there are now less then 100,000 koalas left in the wild in Australia due to land clearing. That is less then the number of minke whales in the oceans that Australians get worked up over every year during the Japanese whale hunt.
The land clearing forces koalas to move long distances in search of new habitat that exposes them to feral animals and motor vehicles. Even if
the newest global warming claim is true, the koala first needs to have habitat left before global warming can even threaten it.
UPDATE: I think this view sums up the Koala “Sam” incident perfectly:
She is referring to sceptics (journos?) like Prue Vincent who clarified in The Smage that the video was “actually taken in the week leading up to the deadliest bushfires in Australian history, during preventative backburning operations”.
No-one’s claiming Sam wasn’t in a bushfire-affected area, just that it wasn’t one associated with Black Saturday, which is the conclusion an onlooker would draw from most of the reporting on the Koala quench.
McNaught herself wrote about Sam on 11 February: “Sam became the most famous koala in the world when firefighter David Tree stopped to give him a drink amid the devastation of the Victoria fires.”
In fact, the photo was taken on 1 February, six days before the Victoria-wide fires broke out (the fires most people would associate with the term “Victoria fires”). It doesn’t make the Koala any less cute or any less thirsty. And who’s to say that symbolism can’t sometimes transcend accuracy when it serves a higher cause, like highlighting the plight of animals caught in bushfires.
But it is a reminder that even in times of tragedy we should continue to question the story behind the story. [Crikey]
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ORIGINAL: I like many people found the picture of a firefighter giving water to a koala in the middle of a bushfire to be just incredible; well it turns out it was too incredible:
It’s been revealed that video footage of a Victorian firefighter giving water to an injured and dehydrated koala was not quite what it seemed.
“Koala Man” Dave Tree made news across the globe with footage of a koala drinking from a bottle. The footage, shot on a mobile phone became a sensation on the website YouTube.com.
However the appealing scene was actually taken in the week leading up to the fires, during preventative backburning operations.
Dave says there was no intention to deceive. He took the video to show his daughter.
The koala “Sam” has come to symbolis the plight of native animals left homeless after the massive fires burnt thousands of hectares of bush. [TV NZ]
Here is the original YouTube of the encounter with the koala:
I still find it to be just incredible footage even if it happened a few days before the big bushfires.
I was searching around the web today and stumbled upon this weird piece of information concerning Australian koalas:
Female koalas indulge in lesbian “sex sessions”, rejecting male suitors and attempting to mate with each other, sometimes up to five at a time, according to researchers.
The furry, eucalyptus-eating creatures appear to develop this tendency for same-sex liaisons when they are in captivity. In the wild, they remain heterosexual.
Scientists monitoring the marsupials with digital cameras counted three homosexual interactions for every heterosexual one.
“Some females rejected the advances of males that were in their enclosures, only to become willing participants in homosexual encounters immediately after,” say the researchers.
“On several occasions more than one pair of females shared the same pole, and multiple females mounted each other simultaneously. At least one multiple encounter involved five female koalas.
“One theory put forward by the researchers is that the females do it to attract males; another is that it is simply hormonal, or that it is a stress reliever. [NZ Herald]
Obviously these scientists from the University of Queensland have nothing better to do with their time.
The latest global warming scare this time concerns koalas:
Lab tests have revealed that global warming is stripping the goodness from eucalypt leaves, and the University of Sydney researchers behind the study say the koalas that rely on them don’t have enough time to adapt to the change.
“What currently may be good koala habitat may well become, over a period of not so many years at the rate that carbon dioxide concentrations are rising, very marginal habitat,” lead researcher Professor Ian Hume said.
“I’m sure we’ll see koalas disappearing from their current range even though we don’t see any change in tree species or structure of the forests.” [AAP]
Koalas are dissappearing right now from their habitats and it is not because of global warming. I love how people use the global warming scare to disguise what the real environmental issues are. According to the Australian Koala Foundation there are now less then 100,000 koalas left in the wild in Australia. That is less then the number of minke whales in the oceans that Australians get worked up over every year during the Japanese whale hunt.
The reason for the decline of koalas is mainly because of land clearing, which forces koalas to move long distances in search of new habitat that exposes them to feral animals and motor vehicles. Even if the newest global warming claim is true, the koala first needs to have habitat left before global warming can even threaten it.
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