Koalas: What They Didn’t Tell You

Koalas – at first, they may seem cute and cuddly, but think again: koalas are more disgusting than you could ever imagine.

For starters, pap, a mushy, runny feces containing beneficial gut bacteria, is produced by mother koalas. Joeys eat this mixture in order to develop their digestive system so they are able to consume toxic eucalyptus leaves. But that is not all.

To continue, koalas’ teeth, unlike most herbivores, do not continue to grow for the entirety of their lives, nor do they have large molars; because of this, over time, the koala’s teeth can erode to the point where the koala starves to death because it can no longer chew eucalyptus.

Another one of the koalas’ dark secrets is that they spend so much energy digesting the eucalyptus leaves, they do not have enough energy to think and are therefore very stupid animals; koalas have the smallest brain to body ratio of any mammal. If a eucalyptus leaf is removed from a branch and presented to a koala, they will not recognize it as food.

Still think koalas are cute? Shame on you.