The koala is found along the eastern and southern coasts of Australia, though populations also extend inland where there is sufficient moisture. Females reach sexual maturity at 2-3 years and males at 3-4 years. Young koalas, called joeys, remain hidden in their mother's pouch for the first six months. The word "koala" comes from an Aboriginal word meaning something like "doesn't drink" and its scientific name refers to its pouch and ash-colored fur.
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The koala is found along the eastern and southern coasts of Australia, though populations also extend inland where there is sufficient moisture. Females reach sexual maturity at 2-3 years and males at 3-4 years. Young koalas, called joeys, remain hidden in their mother's pouch for the first six months. The word "koala" comes from an Aboriginal word meaning something like "doesn't drink" and its scientific name refers to its pouch and ash-colored fur.
The koala is found along the eastern and southern coasts of Australia, though populations also extend inland where there is sufficient moisture. Females reach sexual maturity at 2-3 years and males at 3-4 years. Young koalas, called joeys, remain hidden in their mother's pouch for the first six months. The word "koala" comes from an Aboriginal word meaning something like "doesn't drink" and its scientific name refers to its pouch and ash-colored fur.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
The koala is found along the eastern and southern coasts of Australia, though populations also extend inland where there is sufficient moisture. Females reach sexual maturity at 2-3 years and males at 3-4 years. Young koalas, called joeys, remain hidden in their mother's pouch for the first six months. The word "koala" comes from an Aboriginal word meaning something like "doesn't drink" and its scientific name refers to its pouch and ash-colored fur.
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Koala
(Phascolarctos cinereus)
The koala is found in
coastal regions of eastern and southern Australia, from near Adelaide to the southern part of Cape York Peninsula. Populations also extend for considerable distances inland in regions with enough moisture to support suitable woodlands. The koalas of South Australia were largely exterminated during the early part of the 20th century, but the state has since been repopulated with Victorian stock. The koala is not found in Tasmania or Western Australia.
Females reach maturity at 2 to 3 years of age, males at
3 to 4 years. A baby koala is referred to as a joey and is hairless, blind, and earless. Young remain hidden in the pouch for about six months, only feeding on milk.
The word koala comes from the Dharuk gula. Although
the vowel /u/ was originally written in the Latin alphabet as "oo" (in spellings such as coola or koolah), it was changed to "oa" possibly due to an error. The word is erroneously said to mean "doesn't drink".
The scientific name of the koala's genus, Phascolarctos,
is derived from Greek phaskolos "pouch" and arktos "bear". Its species name, cinereus, is Latin and means "ash-coloured".
