Diet
Koalas are herbivorous and feed exclusively on certain eucalyptus leaves. An adult can eat up to 500 g of leaves daily.
Since the leaf of eucalyptus has large quantities of water, koalas almost do not drink water, the reason for which they were named "Koala"; in the language of the Aborigines, koala means "who do not drink."
Koalas love leaves. An adult koala is a leaf - eater. It eats eucalyptus leaves. When koalas are not sleeping, they are usually eating or looking for food.
They do not have to look far, since their diet is made up almost entirely of eucalyptus leaves. Over 600 types of eucalyptus trees grow in Australia, but a koala will eat the leaves of only two or three kinds.
It occasionally eats leaves from other trees as well, such as tea and cherry trees. Not all koalas like the same kinds of leaves.
A koala's taste depends partly on where it lives. Each koala has its own favorite local trees from which it eats. koalaswhen their favorite food source is under threat or in short supply.
A koala's taste depends partly on where it lives. Each koala has its own favorite local trees from which it eats.
Having a restricted diet like this causes big problems for koalas when their favorite food source is under threat or in short supply.
A single koala may eat just two types of eucalyptus all of its life. This is partly because it does not like to change.
Once a young koala starts to eat the leaves of the trees in its home range, it tries to feed on the same kind, year after year.
Each region of Australia has its own types of eucalyptus, and most woodlands contains only a few of these. koalasin the northeast eat different eucalyptus leaves than those in the southeast.
1- year – old koala eats about 11 oz. (300g.) of food each day.
A full – grown koala, about 3 years old, can eat up to 1.1 lb. (500g.) daily
The koalas are one of nature's most fussy eaters. It will only eat the leaves and young shoots of the eucalyptus tree.
It also eats the tree's stems, flowers, and bark, but it likes the leaves best.
And not just the leaves of any eucalyptus tree. Of the more than seven hundred varieties of eucalyptus, the koala will only eat from about three dozen of them.
If you are thinking that eucalyptus is highly nutritious because they are almost the only food that koalas eat, you are wrong.
The koala must eat between 1 and 1.5 pound (454 and 680 grams) of eucalyptus leaves a day to provide it with enough nutrition to survive.
That is a lot to eat for a small animal. The koalas spend s about two to four hours a night chewing the tough leaves into a thin paste that it can swallow.
When its stomach is full, it will store more leaves in its fat cheeks. Much of the other eighteen or more hours of a koalas' day are spent sleeping.
All that eating is hard work, and the koala's poor diet provides it with a limited amount of energy.
As soon they are born they are fed on its mother's milk. Shortly after its eyes open, it starts to eat "pap".
These are special droppings produced by the mother, made from eucalyptus leaves she has partly digested.
The baby's stomach cannot digest fresh leaves, which are very tough. But pap contains leaves that the mother's stomach has begun to break down.
They are in a form that the Joey can digest.
Pap is the first step toward a life of eating leaves. But the young koala still takes milk from its mother's teat every day.
On milk alone, the Joey grows slowly. Once it begins to eat pap, growth is much faster.
Young koalas learn to identify food by copying their mother as she eats.