Koala Jigsaw Puzzle Online

Interesting and Amazing Facts about Koalas

Koalas usually give birth to one baby at a time. Newly born koalas are known as Joeys. At birth they only a tiny 20 millimetres long, in other words about the size of a jelly bean. They are blind, earless, furless and pink in color. Once born, they crawl with strong front legs and claws using just the senses of smell and touch, in combination with natural instinct, from the birth canal into their mother's pouch and down to one of her two teats. When a koala Joey suckles on its mother, her teat will swell to stop her baby from losing its grip. The baby koala will remain in its mother's pouch for the first six months after its birth. After this time, the young koala will emerge but will stay with its mother, riding on her back most of the time, for a further 6 months or so. During this period the baby will be weaned on milk and eucalyptus leaves until the baby is about 1 year of age, at which time the weaning will be complete and eucalyptus leaves will then become its main source of food.

The main part of the eucalyputus that koalas will eat is the fresh growth at the top parts of the plants which have the newests and juiciest shoots. Because they eat so many eucalyptus leaves, koalas smell like concentrated cough sweets! They rarely drink as they get the water they need from their food.

Koalas sleep for 18 to 22 hours every day because the eucalyptus leaves which makeup their main diet is a tough and fibrous plant which is difficult to digest and doesn't give a lot of energy in return. They are generally a nocturnal animal.

They have 5 toes on each of their 4 feet. On their front feet, two of these 5 digits are opposable, giving them excellent grip on their eucalyptus trees. Each of their rear feet have one thumb, with the two digits next to the thumb fused together to create a grooming claw.

Most of the life of a koala is spent in trees. They will jump to travel between trees and rarely venture to the ground except to mate, or if the distance between trees is too large to jump.

They have dense water-resistant fur which is soft to the touch and is used to protect them from rain, cold and hot weather . On their bottoms the fur is extra-dense to give them a nice cushion to sit on whilst perched on twiggy branches.