LEARN how to tell when you are looking at a boy koala

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Today we're going to have a look at how to tell the boy koalas from the girl koalas. A lot of the time they can look quite similar, but there's actually more differences than you might imagine. By the end of this video, hopefully, you'll be able to look at a koala and tell if it's a boy or a girl and not just look at it and see it as simply being a koala.

We're going to start off by having a bit of a look at the general head shape of the male koala. The first thing you will notice is that males generally have a much broader, and often a slightly flatter top of their head.

I dug right through all over my archived photos and videos to use as many different boys as I could find to be able to really show what a male head looks like. What we're trying to develop an eye for, is to be able to look at a koala and see a masculine look to his face. Alright let's have a look at the boy koala's ears. The first thing that we should notice is that in general, the boy koalas have ears that are smaller in relation to the size of their head. Now they don't always have small ears, but because they have a larger broader head, they should look smaller.

Some male koalas do actually have smaller ears, but some of them just have such a lovely big head that their ears look smaller. It's not always the case, but generally, most males don't have such fluffy ears as the female.

The facial structure of the boys has a really big influence on their eyes. Because they have a more protruding Roman nose, it usually makes their eyes look like they are more slanted rather than a front facing large round eye. So, the eyes can be a good thing to be checking. The male koala nose. What our honker he should have!

All koalas have a big nose, and we know that, but the boy's nose is a more protruding nose, so it comes out of his face more in a Roman type shape. and his nose in general is just larger. One of the influences that this more protruding, larger nose can have, is it can actually make the males eyes appear to be a little bit smaller they are smaller compared to the overall size of his skull and large nose coming out.

Even with all of these things, checking the face of a koala to see if it's a boy or a girl can still sometimes be a little bit confusing. But the chest of the koala is going to tell us a whole extra story.

You can see Jordan there climbing up a tree and rubbing his chest against the bark. So, he is scent marking and in this bit of footage here, you can see a fantastic dark brown stain all down the front of that chest. And that is a scent gland. The boy koala rubs at scent gland on the trees and because it has an oily base, the smell stays there for quite a long time and that's really important way of marking territory. There really two ways that they mark their territory or actually I think we could say they've got three ways, as they will also mark their trees with their urine. I will talk about other ways males mark their territory in a little bit further on during this video.

Of course, there's also another way that we can tell the boys from the girls which is to see these treasured little nuggets that only the boys have.

So, when we get to actually see underneath to the belly of a koala, if it's a girl we expect to see a pouch or at least a pouch opening or a flat belly. And if it's a boy, we should see his testes.

Now, I don't know if you know this fact about koalas, but koalas only have one opening to the outside of their body which is called a cloaca. Quite a large amount of animals in fact have a cloaca. So, birds, reptiles some types of fish, sharks and the marsupials, all have just the one external opening which means that the two openings in the body from which an animal urinates and defecates are actually contained inside the cloaca.

And that's why, most of the time, you will never see a koalas penis, because it is hidden inside except for when he is actually mating.

Another interesting thing to note is that the testes actually sit above the cloaca.

I did mention a bit earlier that there's a third way that koalas mark their territory. And that is to give a good loud bellowing that announces to everybody “this area here is mine, mine, mine.”

The deeper the bellow, the bigger and stronger the koala is.

And you've made it right through to the end of the video!

So, I hope that you've really enjoyed this one.

The next video in this series is going to be how to tell a young koala from an older koala.

So, can you write in the comments “boys are beaut!”

And I look forward to seeing you on the next video.

Thanks for visiting Koala Gardens.

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