Celebrate Australia Day with this series of caches and learn some interesting facts along the way.
The Koala is a cuddly, tree-dwelling, plant-eating Australian marsupial with grey fur, a big black nose and large fluffy ears.
It has long arms and legs with very sharp claws which it uses to cling onto trees and branches. The koala spends almost all of its life in trees, only coming down to the ground to travel from one tree to another. It is a fairly harmless animal. However, if provoked, it can scratch and bite.
Some people call the Koala a Koala Bear. This is not correct. It is not a bear. There are no bears of any sort in Australia. Just like each human fingerprint is unique, each koala's finger print is unique and different from that of every other koala. Koalas don't have a tail. In keeping with its energy conservation lifestyle, the koala moves slowly, feeds mainly at night and sleeps between 18 to 22 hours each day. When on the ground it has a slow awkward walk
A koala will mark its home trees and defend them fiercely. While home ranges may overlap a koala will not venture onto the home trees of another koala The Koala is a nocturnal tree-dwelling herbivore whose diet is primarily the leaves of eucalyptus trees. These leaves are highly poisonous, hard to digest and very low in nutrition to most other animals.
Motor vehicle strikes account for as many as 4,000 koala fatalities each year. While safe in their trees, koalas, are vulnerable when they are on the ground walking from one feeding tree to another. Forest fires in Australia are fast and burn intensely. The koala is too slow to run away from these fires and usually seeks shelter by climbing to the top of a tree. Many perish during these fires.