We Come From A Sunburnt Country
This is a blog about Australia.
It's a celebration, a piss take, and a bloody good whinge.
As Aussies do best.Contributors: mariposima, thomaswylde, lyall, albertinho & clusterpod
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“Koalo” (Koala - Phascolarctos cinereus)
Sure, it lives its life in trees, dines almost exclusively on a plant genus that is incredibly non-nutritive and toxic to most animals (Eucalyptus), and the males have a two-pronged penis, but the koala has more in common with humans than you might think.
For one, they have lots of problems with venereal diseases, including one that’s so closely related to the human strain it can be transmitted across species - chlamydia. However, in koalas, chlamydia is present even in most healthy animals, and it’s only when the animal gets stressed or otherwise weakened that it manifests as disease. There’s currently a huge uptick in the numbers of koalas infected with chlamydia, causing mass sterility and, in many cases, death.
On a less dire note, koalas are the most distantly-related mammal to display “dermatoglyphes” - fingerprints with ridged loops and whorls, like humans have. In fact, it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between the two under a microscope. As Homo sapiens and Phascolarctos cinereus diverged over 70 million years ago, it’s clear that this is a case of convergent evolution, developed to help the koala grip onto branches and tree trunks.
Aracana, or, The museum of Natural History. George Perry, 1811.
Those cute little Koalas? Kids, don’t play with them, you’ll get chlamydia.
Not to mention they’re pretty much jerks who will act all cute and cuddly until you get within biting distance. The only time they’re not total jerks is when you have something they direly need. They’re way smarter than they should even have the capacity to be.
Fun fact: The koala’s low-nutrition diet means that it gets very little energy, and the brain is a massive energy sink. As a result, in the past few thousand years, the koala’s brain has shrunk to the size of a walnut, leaving most of its cranial cavity filled with cerebrospinal fluid, and the koala with one of the smallest brains for its size among mammals - just 0.2% of its total mass.
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