All of the marsupials have different strategies for what to do when their teeth get ground down by their fiber-heavy diets. Wombats have rodent-like teeth that never stop growing, and kangaroos have extra molars that move forward as they age. But the koala has the most elegant solution for this problem: when it loses its teeth to weathering, it simply starves to death.
You forgot to mention that their teeth aren't infinitely growing like a lot of animals that eat coarse leaves. So eventually their teeth wear down and they starve to death.
Well, for an adult explanation- essentially the leaves are only poisonous to a species which haven't evolved to eat them. There's also a couple of others like the sugar gliders and some of our possums that will eat them from time to time as well without issue and in my backyard at least the koala's there will tend to also eat other tree leaves like Melaleuca, honey suckle and one even had a go at the mango tree. Do they like it? Dunno! They didn't seem to suffer any real adverse effects and what they eat mostly seems to come down to whats available and some peculiarities in various populations in some areas.
@@eberhanicio7062 Right? Besides deforestation and other unintentional ways we're killing them, that's like the only reason! We literally are just a horrible virus on this planet that would be better off gone.
They can't tell the difference between a leaf on a plate, and a leaf on a branch. That said, I think they can get a pass on the whole hole confusion thing...
Koalas got their Chlamydia from a Sheep. My Brain: "Mental image has been permanently blocked for this thought. Please just forget the information immediately and don't ask how ever again."
"These sticky-icky poison bears can barely even breath from ... Jerry? I'm not sure it's appropriate to have a pun about animals having an STD. No I don't know a better way to say it. Just show a visual aid. ...That's a jar of honey being poured on an ear muff"
The "real" answer is that they're alive due to defensive mimicry. They look quite similar to the TERRIFYING, very dangerous, and totally definitely real Dropbears. Nothings gonna take the risk and have a go when it might be a Dropbear.
Evolution didn't decide anything, Koala's evolutionary lineage kind of just went, "Yeah, this is good enough." Which is also how every other evolutionary lineage advances or degrades. 'Survival of the fittest' is more like 'survival of the okayish'.
There's 1.4 million square kilometres of forest in Australia. Adapting to be able to eat from those trees (and live in them) was a massive advantage, even with all the sacrifices that enabled it.
Many species only want live food. The more energetic the live food is, the more they want to eat it. This helps them avoid eating dead/rotting/sick/diseased food. Maybe the reason why they only eat leaves that are on a branch is to make sure that they're not eating old decomposing moldy rotting leaves.
There are also some Chlamydia protected habitats in Queensland forests, which are closely monitored. The trouble with "rehousing" Koalas to protected places is that they usually only eat Eucalyptus leaves from the area they inhabit. But what can we do? They're too cute to let die out.
3:02 “The glamorous life of a koala doesn’t stop with having to eat poop in order to not be poisoned by their food. They somehow make time in their busy schedules to pass chlamydia on to one another.” Quit possibly the best two lines of any SciShow.
They also ONLY eat approx 10 species of the trees from the hundreds that are available. They are also "taught" which to eat from their area, so if moved to different part of the country, they will starve, even if there are edible varieties available. Was also told, not sure if true, that the bacteria that help them are very specific to certain vareities of trees. So if "taught" to eat new varieties, they also need the bacteria for those new varieties.
Although their brain is smooth, I don't think it's smooth enough to make this statement true. From what I heard in another youtube video, the Koalas prefer their own trees; if the leaves of those trees die out, so too will the koala, the reason for this is the soil. The soil doesn't grow all eucalyptis leaves the same, some trees are too deficient in nutrients, and so the Koalas won't eat the leaves of those trees, so they stick to their prefered ones, which are reletively few.
The Fort Worth Zoo (in the other half of the northern Texas Megacity from Dallas) briefly had three koalas. They ended up sending them back because the visitors complained about not being able to see them -- koalas sleep 20 hours a day, and spend their four hours active/eating mostly at night, so they're not the best critters to put on display in a zoo.
Import them to California! We need them to help clear the flammable eucalyptus leaf litter. And since eucalyptus were an introduced species, there's no argument for not having California Koalas as long as they continue to grow there.
As an Australian I've never understood why they were introduced. They're scruffy and unattractive, aren't a great wood source and they're flammable. We have to live with them. California's reason?
I mean.. would there be any downside to their introduction? What would they outcompete? Would they become prey to other animals? Do their diets make them toxic? Honestly this might be a case where introducing them won't have much, if any, downsides.
@@StephBer1 Supposedly it was as windbreaks and that they were hard to kill and drought resistant. They're only now maturing, and as we all know, they do it by exploding.
@@Dee-jp7ek It is always risky to introduce non-native plants and animals because it is impossible to know how they will effect an ecosystem. Ecosystems are extremely complex.
@@Catlily5 I'm aware. It was mostly a half hearted "haha.. unless?" because on surface level it seems reasonable. Even if all they eat is the eucalyptus leaves you would at the very least have to consider a possible uptick in predator populations from the new, readily available food source let alone any other nuances we may not be aware of.
Im listening to Sapiens currently and it talked about human deforestation when we first arrived in Australia, mostly through controlled burns. Eucalyptus trees are particularly resistant to fire and thus they reproduced much more after these controlled burns leading to the prevalence of eucalyptus on the continent today
@@robdude999 I know your comment is a year old, but basically, they refuse to mate in captivity. I mean, in all fairness that can’t be blamed fully on them, since it wouldn’t be a problem if we didn’t screw up their housing districts and supermarkets with our own zoning ideas, but it still ends up being a nightmare to deal with, since this is supposed to be the “easy” part
@@spindash64 hey thanks for the response! Good to know that. Sucks how we're making it hard for them but at least we can say OK we at least know why this is happening.
Because the pandas basically migrated to those regions to avoid competition against other bears like the sun bear and since bamboo is what is most abundant in those areas, bamboo is what they ended up eating, but since I understand that bamboo is more water than nutrients, they basically eat water, and well they don't give it many nutrients for its reproduction you know, that's why they ended up how they ended up.
All joking aside, koalas are actually really interesting in what they can teach us, because they somehow ARE still alive despite eating poop, poison, and dirt, falling out of trees constantly, and lacking pretty much any higher brain function. For some reason, they’re still around, and looking at the evolutionary processes that created them could show us more about evolution in general.
Koalas' Kampf: - In NSW, koala habitat destruction increased by about 32%, from an average annual loss of 11,153 ha over the period 2004-12, jumping to 14,695 ha in the 2012-17 period. Since the vulnerable listing, 73,475 ha of known or likely koala habitat has been cleared in NSW (up to mid-2017) 62% of these land clearings was for forestry operations. - Land clearance is one of the significant threats to wild koala populations with a loss of close to 92% of prime Eucalyptus forest and Acacia land cover, which supports some low-density koala populations also reduced to 86% since European settlement in 1800s. In NSW, the rate of forest clearing is alarming on a global scale - Unsurprisingly, loss of prime habitat has been identified as the greatest stressor to wild koalas, affecting them physiologically through chronic stress - Aside from stress-impaired immune systems, clearing as also forced denser populations of Koalas to live within the ever-decreasing number of forest "patches". This increases disease transmission and reduces gene diversity. Given there's so much stacked against the Koalas' favour, what does the NSW government do? Refer to Koalas as "tree rats" and exempt 80% of lands from Koala Habitat Protection (meaning they're free to be destroyed)
@@ortherner their survival has been tenuous for some years now. For many years NSW government has been plagued by the idea of protecting these "tree rats" because it stopped them from making more of that big deforestation money. In 2017, the humans won 1:0 to the koalas and we've been tripling our habitat clearing records ever since.
Nice Koala facts! You did forget to mention the evolutionary offshoot of the species known as drop bears. They lost their microbiome to digest eucalyptus and developed a carnivorous diet. They hunt any prey (including humans) that are silly enough to walk under the tree they are in, causing more human deaths each year than saltwater crocodiles, box jellyfish, sharks, funnel web spiders, and taipans combined!!
The correct answer, that hardly anyone has mentioned and even the video mentions quickly and moves on NO COMPETITION. Nothing else eats the toxic leaves.
Since Koala's have few natural predators because of their diet, they basically got taken out of the predator vs prey dichotomy, so the effects of evolution did not make them progress very far.
The name teddy bear comes from former United States President Theodore Roosevelt, who was commonly known as "Teddy." It was originally based on an American Black Bear he refused to shoot.
TL;DR - Predators often mistake Koalas for their dangerous cousins: Drop Bears. This keeps their natural predators at a safe distance, leading to the Koala population boom that we see today.
And there are still koalas unaffected by chlamydia, not many though, over 90% are affected, it was hard working in the wildlife hospitals because most of the cases are either chlamydia koalas, or native animals hit by cars
It'd seriously suck to be a Koala. All things aside, the thought of having a brain so smooth that you can't even tell leaves are food when they're separated from the branches is terrifying
Koalas are for sure pretty dim. However their predatory cousin, the Drop Bear is a sly crafty bugger that you do not want to encounter! Rabbits, Humans, it's all the same dinner to them.
My apartment is infested with koala bears. It's the cutest infestation ever. Way better than cockroaches. When I turn on the light a bunch of koala bears scatter. But I don't want 'em to, you know, I'm like "Hey, hold on, fellas. Let me hold one of you. And feed you a leaf." Mitch Hedberg
We used to own a Doberman that would reach up and grab an apple off our tree, and eat it. He wouldn't eat an apple off the ground though. But he would eat one I handed him. So he recognized an apple when it wasn't on the tree, but wouldn't eat one off the ground. So how do they know the koalas don't recognize them on the plate, but not considering them food, because they're not on the tree?
Chlamydia Pecorum- the species that infects Koalas- is mostly found in sheep and cattle, and is spread by their fecal matter. Rainwater will wash the bacteria out of the dung, and into pools that Koalas drink from, spreading the illness. Edit: Humans are afflicted by at least one or two other species named C. Trachomatis and C. Pnuemoniae. C. Trachmatis is the sexually transmitted variety, while C. Pnuemoniae cause pneumonia and arteriosclerosis.
Growing up on Phillip Island, I remember some sleepless nights wondering, "why oh why does that lonely male koala have to make such horribly long and loud guttural noises!
Koalas: my brain is so smooth, your insults just glide right over them!
Lol nice
Lol
😋
Nice haha
Cho Bi Dumb: Hold my uh, the thingy . . .
Koalas are proof that nature is the survival of the good enough
Lolol
This is the best
That's how survival has always worked
Perfection is wasteful
@@WolfgangDoW altho I would argue that the mantis shrimp is a little op
So true and often misunderstood.
Also it is not about the individual but the population with a gene or trait.
All of the marsupials have different strategies for what to do when their teeth get ground down by their fiber-heavy diets. Wombats have rodent-like teeth that never stop growing, and kangaroos have extra molars that move forward as they age.
But the koala has the most elegant solution for this problem: when it loses its teeth to weathering, it simply starves to death.
@@arqamisOK th-cam.com/video/nLN36pgwS5o/w-d-xo.html
Lol xD
Works for elephants.
@@DrD0000M it's easy to forget that elephants have teeth
Just finished watching Ze Frank's vid, huh?
"How are Koalas alive?"
Sci show: "We have no idea."
Because humans think they're cute
@@crinsombone5380 Funnily enough, the majority of the people I know absolutely hate them.
Koalas are begging to be extinct, just like Pandas.
3:47
@@Shrimpyfriedrice Because?
You forgot to mention that their teeth aren't infinitely growing like a lot of animals that eat coarse leaves. So eventually their teeth wear down and they starve to death.
🤣🤣
@@beezusHrist bruh how’s that funny?
So basically like very poor people in some countries.
@@huldu that's a lot to unpack so we're just going to throw out the whole suitcase
@@huldu that's a lot to unpack so we're just going to throw out the whole suitcase
I love how the koala in the thumbnail looks like it JUST delivered the punchline to a joke and it’s waiting for your reaction.
That is incredibly specific
Thumbnail koala: "Why should you always trust products made by koalas? Because they're high koala-ty!"
That's what I was thinking, too!
"You get it right?? "Who" is his name!"
It reminds of John Howard...
"How does the Koala avoid the toxins of the eucalyptus leaf?"
"They don't, they just don't give a crap."
@@TheRealBatabii I was just gonna say they prolly think its better than the poop they get growing up🤣💀 LOL
@@TheRealBatabii 1000 out of 10.
@@payableondeath9091 like msot vegans ,koalas are soyboys
Well, for an adult explanation- essentially the leaves are only poisonous to a species which haven't evolved to eat them. There's also a couple of others like the sugar gliders and some of our possums that will eat them from time to time as well without issue and in my backyard at least the koala's there will tend to also eat other tree leaves like Melaleuca, honey suckle and one even had a go at the mango tree.
Do they like it?
Dunno! They didn't seem to suffer any real adverse effects and what they eat mostly seems to come down to whats available and some peculiarities in various populations in some areas.
@@krissteel4074 Like it doesn't matter what you do with those animal scum, oh wait you're Australian, it doesn't matter, it's not like I care either.
I will always hear Zefrank’s narration stating koala’s are missing the “thinky-thinky bits” in his true fact series whenever I hear Koalas mentioned.
yes.
Petition that SciShow rename this vid
_How do the koala do ?_
Can't fool me, brain witch
For me its the line "Which the Koala's could have avoided, by eating literally anything else."
I love Zefrank's videos!
Koalas seem like they’re trying really really hard to go extinct.
Extinction speed run (ANY%)
And they are yet to succeed. But they're getting close.
I mean, wouldn't you?
Just like Pandas.
The wildfires almost did the job
Of all the animals going extinct... this isn't one of the most endangered. Wow.
No, their defense from human encroachment is they are very cute. They can stay.
This is because humans don't kill koalas
@@eberhanicio7062 Right? Besides deforestation and other unintentional ways we're killing them, that's like the only reason! We literally are just a horrible virus on this planet that would be better off gone.
@@chesthoIe idk if you've ever seen them calling, not so cute it's like loud scary snorting 😂
Panda effect. Being cute to humans is a valid survival strategy.
Let us all be grateful for the “John Oliver Koala Chlamydia Ward.”
Bring on the Dancing Lobsters 😊
John Oliver is more smooth-brained than the dumbest koala.
@@akumaking1 your mama
I came to the comments just to see if someone would bring up the John Oliver Koala Chlamydia Ward.
John Oliver (as a Koala) @4:19 !
Other title for this "Koalas are dumber than you thought".
calling someone a koala is an advanced form of insult
Now we got more insults for tic tocers and flat earthers.
Calling someone a koala means calling them fat, stupid, lazy and unclean with a single 3-syllable word. I love it.
@@optillian4182 seems like you have a koala brain because it's definitely 3 syllables not 2 😂😂
@@Tunechi65 shut
@@optillian4182 scum koalas
Stoner: I just space out and mindlessly eat stuff.
Koala: Hold my joint.
SciShow: "How are koalas alive?"
Koalas: "Mind your own business!"
Humans: "You should be dead! How are you doing this?!"
Koalas: "meh."
So...Uh... you gonna tell me how you got clamydia from a cow or sheep?
Koala: Smooth brain...
"I don't know," said Kevin "cow-farker" Koala.
"Me neither," said Simon "sheep-lover" Koala.
In this scenario, Cow and Sheep are the names of two Australian men.
"You've been naughty, haven't you?"
"Smooth brain .."
They can't tell the difference between a leaf on a plate, and a leaf on a branch. That said, I think they can get a pass on the whole hole confusion thing...
@@Im-Not-a-Dog From Canberra specifically.
"They haven't evolved to fight off viral infections we introduced..."
After he just said it's bacterial!
yeah this bothered me too glad to see someone call him out on this.
Yep… came here hoping someone else caught that!
The virus/bacteria thing triggered me more than it should have.
Viral has two meanings, the biology meaning and the one he used. A Bacteria infection can 'go viral' in rapid spread without becoming a virus
Virulent* is probably the word they should have used then.
Koala’s brains are so smooth… no thoughts, just vibes.
Who ironed the koalas brains?
Some iron maiden?
\m/(>o
FLCL warned us about this
@@LimeyLassen I understood that reference.
@@wmdkitty I was gonna say "Medical Mechanica"... ;A;
I love everything about this thread so far
They're missing the thinky thinky parts
lol
True Facts Squad
Koalas got their Chlamydia from a Sheep.
My Brain: "Mental image has been permanently blocked for this thought. Please just forget the information immediately and don't ask how ever again."
Other animals: "Evolution is so awesome!"
Koalas:
I laughed harder at this than I should have.
No thoughts, head empty
Scishow confirms smooth brains are a real thing
@@pbottomley14 as are the politically blind and communists.
@@akumaking1 why you making a political comment, also why communist, there're far worse things.
I can almost hear zefrank chuckling in the background
"These sticky-icky poison bears can barely even breath from ... Jerry? I'm not sure it's appropriate to have a pun about animals having an STD. No I don't know a better way to say it. Just show a visual aid. ...That's a jar of honey being poured on an ear muff"
The "real" answer is that they're alive due to defensive mimicry.
They look quite similar to the TERRIFYING, very dangerous, and totally definitely real Dropbears.
Nothings gonna take the risk and have a go when it might be a Dropbear.
I heard drop bears don't like the smell of Vegemite and will avoid you if you spread some behind your ears.
The fiercest predators in all the outback.
@@TheSerpentsEye And that really something to behold, given this is 'Straya we are talking about.
The Marsupial Lion…
Bruh they’re literally just on hard mode. How did evolution decide this was a good idea lmao
Evolution didn't decide anything, Koala's evolutionary lineage kind of just went, "Yeah, this is good enough."
Which is also how every other evolutionary lineage advances or degrades.
'Survival of the fittest' is more like 'survival of the okayish'.
There's 1.4 million square kilometres of forest in Australia. Adapting to be able to eat from those trees (and live in them) was a massive advantage, even with all the sacrifices that enabled it.
No matter how nicely he phrased everything, i still can’t help but laugh at how everything sounds insulting towards the koala 🤣
SciShow: Koalas have smooth brains
Koalas: *head empty, brain silky*
The title of this video is so savage omg. Really coming for the cute fluffy babies
cute, fluffy, chlamydic, babies
@@Glisern cute, smoothebrain, poopbreathe, chlamydic, babies
koalas are disgusting
Many species only want live food. The more energetic the live food is, the more they want to eat it. This helps them avoid eating dead/rotting/sick/diseased food. Maybe the reason why they only eat leaves that are on a branch is to make sure that they're not eating old decomposing moldy rotting leaves.
There are also some Chlamydia protected habitats in Queensland forests, which are closely monitored. The trouble with "rehousing" Koalas to protected places is that they usually only eat Eucalyptus leaves from the area they inhabit. But what can we do? They're too cute to let die out.
Too cute till they try to rip your face off or get wet.
their cuteness is one of their evolution strategy
@@astaridjatmiko8187 I totally agree 😄
@@metacerberusVT They're cute but cranky. So would you be, with their diet.
Look, don't touch, is their motto.😂
I have officially replaced 'Smooth Brains' with 'Koala Brains' in online gaming insults.
I LITTERALY just had a discussion about this minutes ago! What timing!
About what part of it? Eating poop? Nutrient poor food? Smooth brains? Chlamydia? Refusing crockery?
@@lonestarr1490 everything but the chlamydia lol
Just be thankful they're not smart. Smart koalas are how you get dropbears!
I've been asking myself that for years
3:02 “The glamorous life of a koala doesn’t stop with having to eat poop in order to not be poisoned by their food. They somehow make time in their busy schedules to pass chlamydia on to one another.”
Quit possibly the best two lines of any SciShow.
Koalas? I’m still trying to figure out how Pandas are still alive. But good question regardless...
Recently pandas willingly bred in captivity for the first time in over 10 years in a Chinese zoo. So not all hope is lost for them
Koalas: My brain have a autopilot
Me: At office where the autopilot button?
I mean Gladys and Bruz are trying their best to wipe them out.
Came here looking for a bruz reference. Was not disappointed
the koala is the panda of australia. Doomed to extinction by their own accord but also the head of conservation because of how cute they are
I feel called out by this video. I didn't sign up to have my entire lifestyle put on trial.
When I visited my sister in Australia, one of my takeaways: Don't touch koalas. They have Chlamydia.
Me: holding koala bum at photoshoot at the zoo.
Guys its really simple: Koala's brains are too smooth to comprehend the concept of extinction, so they cant go extinct
They also ONLY eat approx 10 species of the trees from the hundreds that are available. They are also "taught" which to eat from their area, so if moved to different part of the country, they will starve, even if there are edible varieties available.
Was also told, not sure if true, that the bacteria that help them are very specific to certain vareities of trees. So if "taught" to eat new varieties, they also need the bacteria for those new varieties.
SciShow: "There's a term for this.."
Me: "Smooth brained"
SciShow: "Gyrification"
Me: "Psh, duh, of course."
LOVE your hair in this episode!
hey, whats the source for them not eating food on a plate? everyone keeps saying that, but i've never found a primary source
I’m a koala and can verify this is true
@@jablue4329 mah man
Although their brain is smooth, I don't think it's smooth enough to make this statement true. From what I heard in another youtube video, the Koalas prefer their own trees; if the leaves of those trees die out, so too will the koala, the reason for this is the soil. The soil doesn't grow all eucalyptis leaves the same, some trees are too deficient in nutrients, and so the Koalas won't eat the leaves of those trees, so they stick to their prefered ones, which are reletively few.
@@EbonysBlaze idk I'd read the articles on this before arguing
@@got_rats Well, I'm not that smart in this subject, but this was the video and I stamped the time th-cam.com/video/9DVGqXaaCMY/w-d-xo.html
2:30
Koalas live where there isn't much else besides Eucalyptus.
Koala- "They all called me crazy. *chomp* Now who's the fool? *Nom nom nom*"
I was expecting instructions on how to finish the job.
The Fort Worth Zoo (in the other half of the northern Texas Megacity from Dallas) briefly had three koalas. They ended up sending them back because the visitors complained about not being able to see them -- koalas sleep 20 hours a day, and spend their four hours active/eating mostly at night, so they're not the best critters to put on display in a zoo.
"How are Koalas still alive?"
God's sense of humor.
I look at my plush Koala bear and I’m like “You are crazy but I love you!”
Ambiguous use of "viral" at the end is a bit interesting to describe a bacterial infection
“Smooth-brained little cuties.” I will need to use this phrase someday, I’m almost certain.
Import them to California! We need them to help clear the flammable eucalyptus leaf litter.
And since eucalyptus were an introduced species, there's no argument for not having California Koalas as long as they continue to grow there.
As an Australian I've never understood why they were introduced. They're scruffy and unattractive, aren't a great wood source and they're flammable. We have to live with them. California's reason?
I mean.. would there be any downside to their introduction? What would they outcompete? Would they become prey to other animals? Do their diets make them toxic? Honestly this might be a case where introducing them won't have much, if any, downsides.
@@StephBer1 Supposedly it was as windbreaks and that they were hard to kill and drought resistant. They're only now maturing, and as we all know, they do it by exploding.
@@Dee-jp7ek It is always risky to introduce non-native plants and animals because it is impossible to know how they will effect an ecosystem. Ecosystems are extremely complex.
@@Catlily5 I'm aware. It was mostly a half hearted "haha.. unless?" because on surface level it seems reasonable. Even if all they eat is the eucalyptus leaves you would at the very least have to consider a possible uptick in predator populations from the new, readily available food source let alone any other nuances we may not be aware of.
Thank you! Loving the longer hair and earrings. :)
The cuteness is enough
I never found them cute
Im listening to Sapiens currently and it talked about human deforestation when we first arrived in Australia, mostly through controlled burns. Eucalyptus trees are particularly resistant to fire and thus they reproduced much more after these controlled burns leading to the prevalence of eucalyptus on the continent today
_Paraphrases Zefrank to sound witty and original, hopes no one will realize_
"smooth'd brained lil' cuties" I wonder if sci-show is aware that being a smoothbrain is the latest viral insult
“How are koalas alive?”
Well you see, when a daddy koala and a mommy koala love each other VERY much...
They give each other chlamydia?
The bushfires last year knocked out quite a hefty amount of koalas too. I think I read a while back that it wiped out over 90% of wild ones.
Literally smooth brains
i have heard so much about koalas recently, i don't even find them cute anymore
I'm not for the extinction of a species, but if pandas and koalas DO go extinct, I understand why.
I knew koalas weren't the brightest bulb in the tree but why are pandas dumb?
@@robdude999
I know your comment is a year old, but basically, they refuse to mate in captivity. I mean, in all fairness that can’t be blamed fully on them, since it wouldn’t be a problem if we didn’t screw up their housing districts and supermarkets with our own zoning ideas, but it still ends up being a nightmare to deal with, since this is supposed to be the “easy” part
@@spindash64 hey thanks for the response! Good to know that. Sucks how we're making it hard for them but at least we can say OK we at least know why this is happening.
Because the pandas basically migrated to those regions to avoid competition against other bears like the sun bear and since bamboo is what is most abundant in those areas, bamboo is what they ended up eating, but since I understand that bamboo is more water than nutrients, they basically eat water, and well they don't give it many nutrients for its reproduction you know, that's why they ended up how they ended up.
Being cute is a great evolutionary adaptation! Humans are there instead of natural selection all going "aaaaawwwww" :D
Koala’s evolution is one of the strangest and most tragic tales.
All joking aside, koalas are actually really interesting in what they can teach us, because they somehow ARE still alive despite eating poop, poison, and dirt, falling out of trees constantly, and lacking pretty much any higher brain function. For some reason, they’re still around, and looking at the evolutionary processes that created them could show us more about evolution in general.
Q: why are they still alive?
A: The current NSW government is so incompetent they haven't been able make the Koalas extinct, despite years of efforts
I thought the Australian Wildfires in January made them endangered.
Koalas' Kampf:
- In NSW, koala habitat destruction increased by about 32%, from an average annual loss of 11,153 ha over the period 2004-12, jumping to 14,695 ha in the 2012-17 period.
Since the vulnerable listing, 73,475 ha of known or likely koala habitat has been cleared in NSW (up to mid-2017)
62% of these land clearings was for forestry operations.
- Land clearance is one of the significant threats to wild koala populations with a loss of close to 92% of prime Eucalyptus forest and Acacia land cover, which supports some low-density koala populations also reduced to 86% since European settlement in 1800s. In NSW, the rate of forest clearing is alarming on a global scale
- Unsurprisingly, loss of prime habitat has been identified as the greatest stressor to wild koalas, affecting them physiologically through chronic stress
- Aside from stress-impaired immune systems, clearing as also forced denser populations of Koalas to live within the ever-decreasing number of forest "patches". This increases disease transmission and reduces gene diversity.
Given there's so much stacked against the Koalas' favour, what does the NSW government do?
Refer to Koalas as "tree rats" and exempt 80% of lands from Koala Habitat Protection (meaning they're free to be destroyed)
@@ortherner their survival has been tenuous for some years now.
For many years NSW government has been plagued by the idea of protecting these "tree rats" because it stopped them from making more of that big deforestation money.
In 2017, the humans won 1:0 to the koalas and we've been tripling our habitat clearing records ever since.
0:48 there's a term for this... Smooth brain
Koala: Not the strangest thing in Australia
Nice Koala facts! You did forget to mention the evolutionary offshoot of the species known as drop bears. They lost their microbiome to digest eucalyptus and developed a carnivorous diet. They hunt any prey (including humans) that are silly enough to walk under the tree they are in, causing more human deaths each year than saltwater crocodiles, box jellyfish, sharks, funnel web spiders, and taipans combined!!
Hairs looking good bud! You should totally keep it long!
this video could have just as easily been titled "how are Koalas so good at eating poisonous food?"
My pre-watch guess answer: EFFICIENCY
I would say specialization.
@@SECONDQUEST A good guess, two sides of the same coin.
My prewatch guess is: too silly to realise they shouldn't be. Also they sound like demons so satan.
The correct answer, that hardly anyone has mentioned and even the video mentions quickly and moves on
NO COMPETITION. Nothing else eats the toxic leaves.
Koalas are very happy animals.
They like to give clap to every koala they meet.
Our brain: Ugly and wrinkly
Koala brains: Nice and smooth
Since Koala's have few natural predators because of their diet, they basically got taken out of the predator vs prey dichotomy, so the effects of evolution did not make them progress very far.
Is it just me or does it feel like Koalas were supposed to be the original "teddy bear"?
Just don't look at their freaky-ass hands and feet. Their hands have two thumbs and two of their toes are fused together.
Pretty sure that teddy bears aren't meant to give you chlamydia.
@@TheBassManBoy , I've heard they have fingerprints that are identical to human ones.
The name teddy bear comes from former United States President Theodore Roosevelt, who was commonly known as "Teddy." It was originally based on an American Black Bear he refused to shoot.
@@internetuser8922 , TSR had a bear among many 'pet' animals living at the White House.
Dunno if it was the same bear.
They know they're leaves, they just dont want to eat them from a plate.
TL;DR - Predators often mistake Koalas for their dangerous cousins: Drop Bears.
This keeps their natural predators at a safe distance, leading to the Koala population boom that we see today.
Looking into the eyes of the koala at the end of the video looks like someone unplugged the antenna from the analog TV of its mind, just static...
I really like the updated 3D redesign of the channel. I’m sure it will go unnoticed by most by I really like it!
“Smooth-brained little cutie:” that’s what my girlfriend calls me. I always thought it was a compliment…
Before clicking the video, I already knew this video's gonna talk about how smooth-brained and dumdum koalas are.
And there are still koalas unaffected by chlamydia, not many though, over 90% are affected, it was hard working in the wildlife hospitals because most of the cases are either chlamydia koalas, or native animals hit by cars
missed a great opportunity to plug the John Oliver Koala Chlamydia Ward.
They do great work and it's just hilarious that it was named after John.
Forgot to mention how flammable they are ,
It'd seriously suck to be a Koala. All things aside, the thought of having a brain so smooth that you can't even tell leaves are food when they're separated from the branches is terrifying
I've been binging scishow videos for a couple of weeks and I'm enjoying seeing the evolution of Michael's hair.
Koalas are a great example of evolution selecting for "good enough"
You're one of my fave hosts! Thanks Mike.
Koalas are for sure pretty dim. However their predatory cousin, the Drop Bear is a sly crafty bugger that you do not want to encounter! Rabbits, Humans, it's all the same dinner to them.
The first animal to be wiped out by humans for whom I feel no remorse or pity
Basically, Koalas are hilariously bad at being alive.
My apartment is infested with koala bears. It's the cutest infestation ever. Way better than cockroaches. When I turn on the light a bunch of koala bears scatter. But I don't want 'em to, you know, I'm like "Hey, hold on, fellas. Let me hold one of you. And feed you a leaf."
Mitch Hedberg
Koalas are literally smooth brained I can't take it anymore
We used to own a Doberman that would reach up and grab an apple off our tree, and eat it. He wouldn't eat an apple off the ground though.
But he would eat one I handed him.
So he recognized an apple when it wasn't on the tree, but wouldn't eat one off the ground.
So how do they know the koalas don't recognize them on the plate, but not considering them food, because they're not on the tree?
Maybe they have fewer nutrients.
This raises so many more questions, in particular about the inter species chlamydia transmission....
Chlamydia Pecorum- the species that infects Koalas- is mostly found in sheep and cattle, and is spread by their fecal matter. Rainwater will wash the bacteria out of the dung, and into pools that Koalas drink from, spreading the illness.
Edit: Humans are afflicted by at least one or two other species named C. Trachomatis and C. Pnuemoniae. C. Trachmatis is the sexually transmitted variety, while C. Pnuemoniae cause pneumonia and arteriosclerosis.
Growing up on Phillip Island, I remember some sleepless nights wondering, "why oh why does that lonely male koala have to make such horribly long and loud guttural noises!