Just how much can a Koala Bear

[Jim Carroll]

This little Joey was found under a house in Maude just outside Geelong .

At first it just had a drink then decided to go in for a plunge.

It has been in the high 40's the last couple of days so it was looking for a bit of relief

[tea lady]

Must be hot if the koalas are looking for a drink of actual water. Prolly make the front cover of the paper with that pic.

[Jim Carroll]

No it was second page in.

Apparently the local wildlife people are getting lots of calls about distressed animals.

[underfoot]

awwww, how cute

BTW, just a reminder for our international forumites .
LOOK AT THE CLAWS
many of our cuddly native critters are capable of taking care of themselves
(I think I've been bitten, scratched and stung by just about all of them now )

[Ben from Vic.]

Look at the second picture, it's waiting for a beer........ or maybe the soap.

[Ed Reiss]

...and here we thought koalas were tame

[malb]

As mentioned that little one has a great set of claws and is still a jeuvenile. Claws tend to get bigger in proportion to weight not height, so an adult male has a set that match or better a cougar's.

I grew up in the bush (only permanent family within 20 miles, and a few seasonal itinerants). We had a lot of Aussie native wildlife around and lived in conjunction with it. Always had a couple of cats and a dog that were trained to behave from an early age, the cats were a bit tough on small reptiles and birds but the dog invariably got to play with adult and jeuvenile wombats, roos, wallabys etc.

We had a small colony of koalas that liked to visit a stand of gums a few hundred yards away from the house and in my late teens I spent a lot of time up those trees taking photos of the adults with their young. Because I had been around through a few generations of koalas, they were extremely tolerant of this.

Unfortunately, as the area became more popular, there were more and more holidaymakers who bought their cats with them and failed to take them home at the end. Result a lot of starving cats trying to get a feed any way they could. Young koalas spend a lot of time in their mothers pouch, emerging for good at about half the size of the one in the pictures, but then clinging to mums back for a couple of months.

A lot of hungry cats thought that a young koala would be a good solution to the hunger pangs and set about grabbing one. Over six seasons, I was not aware of any of the young that I knew of disappearing, but there was no shortage of dead cats under the trees with there skulls caved in by koala mum protecting her young one. I witnessed one attack by a group of three cats that lasted less than 3 minutes, cats Nil mum 3, 1st round KO.

Adult koala can be 25 pound and can climb at about 30 feet/min if stressed or threatened, so there's some decent muscle and claw involved. Little bit different to the spaced out sleeper that tourists often see.

[mjmjm]

Great second picture. Dontcha love bein an Aussie?
And really like malb's story.

Michael

[weisyboy]

i have seen claw marks on the trees up here well over 6" accross.

i dont want one of tehm latching onto my arm.

it looks like a typical aussie in teh second pic.

[Cruzi]

Great pics,
Yahoo7 is using the bottom one today, hope you are getting royalties.