Bullet – what is this koala thinking?

Copy and paste in translator:

Have I got a treat for you today? You won't believe watching what's going on with bullet as a young juvenile.

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And now sit back enjoy this video

Now please don't be disturbed watching this video. This is fascinating koala behaviour. I would honestly, normally say, that this is mating behaviour. But in fact, these are two teenagers this video I actually took back in 2017. I've come across it as I've been working on some video.

The one on the left who's doing all of the antagonising there is Bullet. The one further out on the limb, who's not terribly impressed, looks like it should be a female by bullets behaviour. But in actual fact, this is a male and his name is Takeshi.

To be honest, I actually do believe that bullet is engaging in mating behaviour. This footage was taken in the September which is the early part of the breeding season. And it was the first breeding season that Bullet was becoming sexually active. So, I think he's actually having a go at the behaviours, but with one of his peers. Kind of like many teenagers just experiment to try and work the moves out.

Now you can see this is all happening very high up in a tree. Look at how far out on the end of the branch Takeshi has gone, which is the strategy that koalas use to attempt to prevent being mated or being in a fight.

Look at the posture of Takeshi, poor fella. He's just sitting there. He is not really game to move too much because he doesn't want bullet to do anything more. And I think he's not game to go out any further.

Hey smash that like button for me, would you?

Now Bullet’s taking a little bit of a break. This whole footage was taken over a period of about an hour and of course I've cut it down a little bit and at times I did stop filming when they would just sort of stop and take a bit of a break.

So we'll see bullets just kind of settling himself, looking around, having a few yawns, catching his breath ready for round two.

It was actually starting to get quite dark and becoming quite difficult for me to film and I had to leave this off.

It would appear that Bullet was the winner of that fight. But these were both juvenile teenagers so to speak, so it was just a bit of a slap up between two teenagers and doesn't indicate who would ever win against a full adult.

So, Bullet’s had some good practice there, learning to grow up and be one of the big boys. You can actually just hear him bellowing now.

I was quite a distance away, so I didn't pick up a very good audio. But bellowing, of course, is a very important male behaviour.

And all these things have to be learned up in the treetops.

So, if you're wondering if I'm sure Takeshi is a boy - there's those little nuggets of proof.

So, you made it all the way through! That's fantastic!

In the comments below can you write “all boys fight”.

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