Australia has lost one-third of its koalas in the past three years | Hacker News Reader

Australia has lost one-third of its koalas in the past three years

reuters.com

139 pointsnreece48 comments

Here's hoping koalas get the protection they deserve and rebound from this. Heartbreaking.

Koalas are adorable and beloved. Imagine how many less obvious (or "gross") species in similar situations don't get articles written about them. That koala populations can plummet this far should be a clarion call about the state of things.

Mirror: https://archive.is/cZkdM

Kaolas are lucky they look cute.

They are an evolutionary dead end and actually nasty, nasty creatures.

Don't reckon they're much different to other Australian wildlife and they're not cuddly like they appear or as many people like to make out.

From time to time when I was a kid my parents and relatives used to take me to places where one could cuddle them and I can tell you they're not very cuddly at all.

We tend to anthropomorphize cute animals with big eyes and I reckon that's not good for conservation overall as the ugly get less attention. Moreover, how animals appear isn't a good indicator of their nature. Another well-known example is the loris, it looks really cute but it's a very bad idea to pick one up as you'll get jabbed by its poisoned barb.

Best thing to do is to just look and leave them be. Koalas aren't the only animals suffering habitat loss, many are and it's a huge problem.

> From time to time when I was a kid my parents and relatives used to take me to places where one could cuddle them and I can tell you they're not very cuddly at all

+1. Would not cuddle. Australia's minister of tourism one famously proclaimed that the koala is "flea-ridden, it piddles on you, it stinks and it scratches."[4]

Fun Fact: The eucalyptus that Koalas eat is a narcotic and the Koalas spend most of their lives in a drugged out stuppor[2]. Baby Koalas eat their mother's feces[1]. They sleep 18 hours a day. They have a strong musky odor. They also suffer from Chlamydia[3] and many parasites. They are nature's hippies.

More seriously, all of these are evolved traits. E.g. the feces is eaten to acquire the microbes necessary to breakdown the Eucalyptus leaf. The 18 hours of sleeping is because those leaves don't have a lot of caloric content. Rather than being an evolutionary dead end in the traditional sense, their biggest problem is loss of habitat, road accidents, and encounters with dogs. I prefer the world with koalas rather than the world without, but would not cuddle or touch them them.

[1] https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/controversial-science-heal...

[2] https://adventuressetravels.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/drug-ad...

[3] https://www.livescience.com/62517-how-koalas-get-chlamydia.h...

[4] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/05/22/f...

> They are nature's hippies.

"Yea, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

Koalas are fine. I don't know anyone who has ever been attacked by one. They just keep to themselves.

Magpies are much worse. I don't know anyone who hasn't been swooped by one.

People injure themselves panicking around Australian Magpies, far more than anything Magpies directly do. Just avoid their space for a few weeks when they are protective, and otherwise they are very sweet. If you must be in their space (i.e. you live there), invest in feeding them (not cat food!), and your main problem will be the singing gets annoying as they follow you around waiting for snacks :)

You're oversimplify it. You don't know where they are until they are already swooping you. They've drawn blood on me before when I was walking from my car into work. They are a menace for cyclists. A woman tripped over recently when being attacked by a magpie. She was carrying her baby. The baby died.

Sure, if you know exactly where they are on a regular route you might be able to avoid them by taking a different route.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-09/qld-baby-dies-after-m...

"People injure themselves panicking around Australian Magpies, far more than anything Magpies directly do." sounds just like victim-blaming.

In comparison, koalas just stay in their trees when you walk past.

Of course I'm generalising because the majority of magpies don't swoop and I like hearing their songs. But there are plenty of overly aggressive magpies that do real harm.

They look even cuter in person. You also don't realize they have two thumbs per hand in most pics.

> They are an evolutionary dead end and actually nasty, nasty creatures.

They're not the only ones.

In what way are they nasty

Look up what the young feed on.

Many animals eat poop for various reasons. For some because it's important to their digestive process (rabbits). For some, because of less important reasons (dogs).

I think all ruminants need to eat fecal matter to get the digestive enzymes needed to process the plant matter in their area.

I used to raise beef cattle. I was told the calves get inoculated from common water supplies, whether a natural watering hole or a trough.

It's not only cattle that get inoculated that way, yours truly was similarly inoculated in that manner. I won't go into vivid specifics except to say that when a toddler my horrified mother rushed me to hospital after I had eaten unmentionables off the street left by our four-legged brethren.

I survived unscathed and asthma fee - a good test of the 'too much hygiene hypothesis' methinks. ;-)

Human babies do the same thing. I'm sure there is a long list on this one.

Poo, for anyone who is interested

Not only that, but basically 100% of the wild population is infected with chlamydia.

They aren't beloved by the Australians I know. They're stupid, smelly, disease-infested pests. But I agree that they look cute.

That's why they must die. I heard that also kanguroos are a pest so they shall be killed also.

"This is it, this is a countdown to extinction"

No. Koalas nor Kangaroos are not considered pests. That's absurd. One is conserved due to their slow reproduction patterns, the other is hunted due to their thriving reproduction patterns.

The extensive bushfires and droughts are definitely big factors. I worked briefly for a forestry in rural Victoria, where we would encounter koalas somewhat frequently where we would plant trees, These are lots that would be planted completely and years later cut and burned.

Wonder what would be also the effects of this on them and wildlife in general.When I have seen Koalas in the wild they seemed very apathetic- saw one stay at the very top of a blue-gum (which famously can shed huge pieces without much warning) even during a storm.

At one point there were millions:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-30/killing-koalas-90-yea...

The official numbers from the survey but no explanation of the methodology. Would be keen to know if these are reported sightings or some other mechanism

https://www.dropbox.com/s/12v1undbbi6x9ez/AKFestimates_2021....

I've always thought that a safety/reserve population of koalas could be maintained in the eucalyptus forests in CA.

This is actually one of my favorite idiosyncratic policy initiatives. They are a pretty safe invasive species since they have only one food source that is already invasive, and as an added benefit, the Koalas would eat the leaves of Eucalyptus trees, reducing the fire risk.

> the Koalas would eat the leaves of Eucalyptus trees, reducing the fire risk

Sadly that won’t work. Koalas hardly make a dent in the consumption of eucalyptus trees. And on top of that, mature Eucalyptus leaves are extremely dry, so koalas will only eat the youngest shoots. So if they had any impact on the trees, it would be making them more flammable, not less.

"hit by drought, bushfires and developers cutting down trees"

We are next.

Honestly, except for massive preservation efforts, Koalas are probably going to where Dodos went before them.

But not to worry, they'll be in very good company. The predatory ecosystem exploitation we've been living and breathing for quite some time now has put incredible strains on our whole life support system. Biological systems are amazingly resilient and this resilience has hidden much of the damage that has accumulated.

Unfortunately this has just made us disregard many of the warning signs that are flashing in front of our eyes. Food webs are collapsing, ecosystems get more and more fragmented and with increased fragmentation, failure in one part cannot be compensated for in another part.

Koalas are cute, so they get the publicity. That's good I guess. But let's not pretend that it's only koalas.

It's everything.

burned in wild fires :'(

Well, that escalated quickly.

Guess some people's really don't like animals and the urge to show that is strong.

Koalas have chlamydia.

This is true; it shouldn't be downvoted. There is, seriously, this terrible koala chlamydia that's going around, causing them severe pain, and rendering them infertile. There's a vet show on some nature TV channel where they try to treat wild animals in distress -- I think it's in Australia; I think it's run by Steve Irwin's family -- and there was definitely an episode with a koala with a seriously nasty case of chlamydia. I forget if it was a male or a female; whatever it was it had some kind of painfully inflamed, pink and distended genitals poking out of its fur, and, if I remember correctly, the inflammation was so bad that it couldn't urinate properly and was probably going to end up dying without treatment. It's really nasty.

Downvotes are for comments that don't add to discussion, not for comments that are disagreed with. (For example, this comment I'm writing is off-topic for the current article, and so should probably be downvoted.)

Stating a simple fact with no sources and no discussion is not a good HN comment. Ignoring your first sentence, your comment is really good.

The parent comment was "Why are koalas nasty"?

Their answer was "Koalas have chlamydia."

How does this not add to the discussion? And this doesn't need a source, that fact is well understood but not obvious to everyone reading this thread.

Can confirm. My gf volunteered in the Koala sanctuary in Port Macquarie, and there's a huge chlamydia epidemic amongst the Koala population. Also ticks, lots of ticks. Had to pick them off her with tweezers every evening she came back from the place.

> Had to pick them off her with tweezers every evening she came back from the place.

Wonderful recreation activity, I would venture!

Koalacide!

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