Koala Gardens was recently interviewed on this topic by a journalist student.
The process of being interviewed was really very enjoyable. We conducted the interview using zoom and I was reminded what a fantastic tool this is, and how all of us working to save koalas should use collaboration tools more.
Kristen had researched the koala issue well before the interview and was able to ask insightful questions and relate answers to the true issue koalas face – the loss of habitat.
Kristen chose a range of people to interview, that span across the northern regions of koala habitat down to the southern areas. This has made her article valuable because the issue is always habitat, but the specific threats and koala response to this issue does vary.
I would highly recommend giving the article a read. As a student, Kristen received a fantastic result for her article as it has been published on the Deakin University at the link below.
We can all make a difference by becoming involved in some way – lobbying, volunteering, planting on our own land, clearing weeds and rubbish, supporting people and organisations and sharing information.
Huge thanks to Kristen for making her mark with this article – we can only hope for this to become a standard for journalists of the future to aim for.
Scents are important to koalas and their sense of smell is highly developed. We are all aware that they have large noses dominating their faces, and that is not coincidental.
The sense of smell is used for two main purposes – communication and chemical analysis of a potential meal. In both cases the ability to conduct a degree of chemical analysis is involved. This means the koala olfactory ability is above most mammals.
Koalas are solitary animals, yet they do live in a colony. This means they recognise the other colony members, and therefore distinguish koalas that are strangers. They are highly unlikely to do this by sight because their solitary arboreal nature means that they may not really ‘see’ each other often. They do however recognise the smell of other koalas. They also recognise the bellow of other males.
Most of the time however, koalas are quiet. Yet a koala does not move through the territory of another koala unnoticed, even if it makes no vocal sounds.
How does one koala know it is moving through another koala’s territory you might ask? How does a regular colony member know another koala has been in their territory?
We observe that both sound and scent are used to communicate more during the breeding season – a time when koalas are actually communicating the most. However, koalas have a home range within their colony area and they have home trees within their home range.
How does one newcomer know a tree ‘belongs’ to another koala? It must be by some method that humans are not aware of unless they were to be come a scientist (even a citizen scientist) and begin to study what is going on.
A terrific thing about using scents to communicate is that it is not directly threatening, and it conserves energy. Koalas will use both scent gland and urine to mark territory, but the messages they leave behind are probably more complex than simple ownership.
Whenever we observe a koala moving on the ground from tree to tree, we notice the koala will take some leaps and bounds, then stop and smell the ground and shrubbery at intervals and so on.
You can clearly see the difference in size of scent glands between these two male koalas.
Every koala has a subtle difference in the chemical composition of their smell, making their own scent as unique as their fingerprint. Colony members remember this individual scent because they not only smell it once, but they smell it in layers if you like. A tree will be marked with scent whenever the koala enters and exits the tree. This builds up these layers of scent. These layers add a lot of meaning to the scent as they advertise clearly that a particular koala owns a tree, or uses it frequently. A koala can also tell how recently the scent was left and so have some idea of whether the owner of the scent is likely to be about.
A male koala will rub his scent gland over trees belonging to other koalas in order to leave an indication that he passed through in a similar way to other mammals that use urine to mark territory and indicate their availability for breeding.
When out in the bush even you can sometimes ‘smell’ a koala about, particularly during the breeding season.
While only males have scent glands, and only mature males have well developed glands, all koalas have a highly developed sense of smell.
I have been fascinated by how koalas respond, or do not respond, to sound, when I have been out koala spotting.
It would appear that koalas have a decent ability to hear. They have large, mobile ears and when awake I have found they can hear footsteps, twigs snapping or voices quite acutely.
However hearing is more than the mechanics of the ear perceiving vibrations. Hearing is also the brain interpreting those vibrations.
I have mentioned in other articles here that koalas are neither prey nor predator animals. If we consider this when observing koala behaviour in relation to hearing, it does shed some light.
Prey animals need to be alert as much of the time as possible, and they will particularly need to be alert through their hearing when they are resting and sleeping.
Predators need their hearing for hunting. They may need to hear smaller animals moving through dense bush for example.
Koalas also become familiar with sounds in their own home range and learn to filter out sounds that their experience tells them is not a threat. This is important in understanding that hearing is as much the brain interpreting sounds as the ear detecting the vibration. I have researched this topic and found little, so have conducted my own research with the koalas here in my daily spotting.
Compare the posture and expression on Legion in the video above to Pinky in the photo below and you can see the difference in response to sound, through being familiar with the sounds.
Pink’s first day here and she is very alert to sounds as nothing is familiar.
An observation I have made with many different koalas over a range of years is that I can elicit a strong reaction from a koala that is new to the property with certain sounds such as pretending to sneeze, cough or even growl. However, with repetition, over a period of time, the reaction will decrease and for many koalas the reaction will completely cease. This means a koala that arrives at the property may startle and stare at me, then move up the tree if I approach and make a sneezing noise. If I repeat this each time I approach on different days, it may take as little as 3 or 4 days for the koala to completely ignore the same noise. Some koalas take longer to reach a point of ignoring me, but I have noticed that every koala will have a significantly reduced response within 3 or 4 days of me approaching and making a particular noise.
There are however, some types of noises they will always respond to, such as stomping footsteps approaching the base of the tree, particularly if long grasses are rustled and twigs snapped. Even though koalas are not truly prey animals, there is an instinct to understand that anything that can make heavy footstep noises, and is approaching the tree, is a possible threat.
I had to make stomping noises to get Mist’s attention as she is very familiar with me.
This does not mean that the footsteps are the loudest noise, at the time. I have often witnessed a koala ignoring the sound of the quad bike approach the tree, but jumping from the bike to the ground and stomping has brought the head up immediately. The bike motor had obviously been making a far louder noise, yet had been ignored.
The next article will discuss koalas and machinery noises, as this becomes important in understanding another layer of why they are at such risk with cars.
Koalas are often killed by cars in towns where the speed limits are much lower as well as out of town on higher speed roads.
One issue for koalas coping with roads in an urban area, is that there is more happening to distract the koala and the person driving the car. The koala has to process a variety of stimuli such as electric lights, dogs barking, children noises, other machinery or traffic, humans and animals walking about and probably an extremely fragmented home range. A car approaching, even at only 60kph is probably just a part of the cacophony around them.
In these situations koalas often simply step onto the road directly in front of a car apparently without seeing it was there at all. This is not because of poor eyesight, but because they cannot separate and deal with all the stimuli. Think of it like very young children playing and how unsafe that is near the road because we know a young child is likely to become so focused on play they will not see a car approaching. In a similar fashion koalas just focus on where the tree they need to get to is, rather than what may be in between them and this destination.
Koalas spend most of their time sleeping and digesting. When they move they are focused on where they are going, not on what is around them.
Koalas are often seen walking along a road (rather than across), or they are reported to simply stop and sit in the middle of a road and watch a car approach and stop in front of them. Observing koalas, it would appear that their flight response is often very low as they don’t have a ‘sense of danger’. This is discussed in the article on dealing with cars in more detail.
When the flight response is elicited in a koala they commonly give a leap in the opposite direction or any random direction and begin to run without checking to see if they have chosen a safe direction. They will then attempt to run to anything that looks like a ‘tree’ structure. In other words, something they can climb. This makes sense because their brain tells them that getting up high is the safe response. Once a koala rushes up a structure in fright it tends to then determine to stay there until well after dark.
Hence we see koalas sitting high up telegraph poles, on fences, or even veranda posts seemingly unwilling to move. The more stressed that koala becomes, the less likely it is to come down.
This is the typical koala response:
ignore everything
react without thinking and get up high
stay very still until late at night when all is very quiet
Roundabouts provide another level of complexity that is nearly impossible for a koala to cope with. All the koala sees is their food tree on the other side and they attempt to move towards it.
It is up to us as drivers to take more notice of wildlife on the roads, as the wildlife are not going to learn our rules.
Koalas are trying to adapt to the modern world but their eyesight is made for the tree tops.
We have discussed the way koala eyes work, or rather how they don’t work as well as the eyes of either predators or prey animals. See koala eyesight post for more background information.
It’s more than their physical eyes however, it’s how their brains are hard-wired as well.
The koala is in an unusual position, being neither prey or predator on any real level. They are just going about their daily business of trying to get enough calories from all those eucalyptus leaves. In the process of doing this, they really are not taking much notice of anything else (except other koalas).
Let us now remember we no longer have large areas of old growth forest providing acre after acre of trees that can be accessed through the branches in the canopy, or at least by coming partway down and jumping across. The koala only had to see around itself, and use their highly developed sense of smell to know which trees were good and move through them.
The koala now finds itself too often, in a single tree, in the middle of an open paddock. He eats his fill, has a sleep then has to climb down to the ground and set off in search of the next tree which may be tens or even hundreds of metres away.
When a koala is awake they are usually hungry and needing calories.
But let us think about the fact that the eyes of the koala are not made to make sense of this – they do not see well at long distances. Their brains are not wired up to think – this trip could be dangerous and tell their eyes to be really sharp either.
Yes a koala that lives well into adulthood is going to learn to traverse particular areas and deal with particular dangers, but the problem is that less and less koalas are living through their early encounters with the dangers on the ground. On top of this, the koalas are using up a lot more calories in order to take in each meal they find because they have to travel down the trunk, across the ground and then up the next trunk again. This is significant as eucalyptus leaves are low in calories and they have to eat a large quantity of them already.
When they are travelling they are usually hungry, and so their primary focus is going to be on getting to a good tree for their next meal. A koala with a full belly nearly always goes to sleep to aid digestion quite quickly.
So a koala walking through a paddock is needing calories and is unlikely to even see a dog coming for it unless the dog makes some good noise. A car approaching from a distance does not register with the koalas eyes at all. We will talk further about how koalas seems to respond to mechanical noises in another post.
Even what they can see is usually distanced from them as they should be up in a tree.
Finally, when a koala does see something approach them, it is normally on the ground and they are up in a tree. Their tactic if concerned is to go higher up the tree. If they are on the ground, by the time they realise there is something of concern it is usually too late.
This highlights the importance of planting clumps of trees and rows of trees connecting good feed clumps together so that koalas can be on the ground for less time and eating more quickly.
There is a reason koala eyesight is not so good over distances.
If you pose this question through Google the answer is pretty quickly returned as “no they do not”.
Now why might that be?
To understand why we need to consider the environment they had before humans came ripping through their homeland and changing everything.
Koalas are arboreal marsupials which means they live in trees, and are mammals that give birth to tiny under-developed young that crawl into a pouch to complete development for around 6 months.
Wild male koala looking down from a pink bloodwood tree
However, we need to think of incredible old growth forests thick with tall trees when we think of the arboreal koala. When you live high in the canopy of a forest, there is not a lot you can see long range. The ground is distant and hidden by the lower branches and smaller young trees. Anything beyond the tree you are in, is likely obscured by branches and leaves from your tree or the next.
Stella is just over 12 months old and though she has bright eyes, she relies more on her hearing than her sight.
Koalas are far from blind, but their long range sight is pretty poor because it was not needed. Koalas are skilled at jumping from trunks and branches to move about, and they look carefully to judge the distance before taking a leap.
Koalas have an acute sense of smell, and they do have keen hearing. Sometimes it seems their hearing is not so keen because they sleep so deeply.
If you can imagine huge forests with hundreds of koalas moving through the treetops, you can maybe imagine that they didn’t bother looking to the ground or out into the sky too often. Their focus was within the short range area of the tree they were currently occupying.
Koalas are said to have no natural predators, but this isn’t completely true. However the only predators that were of any real concern to koalas in the past were usually only a concern for joey’s and small juveniles, and only if they were not in the treetops. The main predators that may take a small number of young koalas are goannas, dingoes, pythons and some powerful owls and eagles. The incidence of these predators seems to have always been fairly low. Coastal pythons are the only one of these predators that may attempt to take a lone young koala in the canopy.
Stevie is looking at me, but it was sound that caught her attention fast, while it took her time to find me with her eyes.
This all means that koalas do not have a historical need to be on a constant lookout for predator threats, and they do not hunt as predators themselves, and so their eyesight, for long distances is somewhat poor.
Another important feature of koala sight is that their eyes are ‘forward facing’ like our eyes. This puts the koala outside the general rule which says – ‘eyes to the side, run and hide; eyes to the front, love to hunt’. Koalas don’t hunt, and yet they did not have any real need to run and hide either, and so they have eyes that face the front which give better depth perception. It’s also one of the features that makes them look so endearing to humans.
Enigma shows us a perfect example of the forward facing eyes of a koala.
The impact for koalas in adapting to the environment we have created by invading their home is huge when you understand their eyesight limitations.
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