The koala is a mammal that resembles a small bear . It is a marsupial : after giving birth, the female incubates her babies in a ventral pouch where the breasts are located.
Scientifically named Phascolarctos cinereus , the koala is an endemic species of Australia that is classified as arboreal since it lives in trees . It generally measures about 70 centimeters and can weigh up to 15 kilograms.
Among the main physical characteristics of the koala are its large head, its large nose, its rounded ears and its robust body that lacks a tail and is covered by brown or grayish fur. Regarding their behavior, they are not very sociable beings.
The koala's main habitat is eucalyptus forests , and it feeds especially on the leaves of this tree. Due to the low amount of calories and nutrients it consumes, it is a sedentary animal that can sleep about 20 hours a day.
Because of their appearance, koalas often become the stars of zoos where they are kept in captivity. Similar to children's stuffed animals, they are often called "koala bears" , although they are not actually bears. It should be noted that, thanks to their popularity, koalas are a symbol of Australia and a tourist attraction in that nation .
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature , the koala is a vulnerable species. This is mainly due to the destruction of habitat caused by the advance of urbanization, agriculture and even forest fires. However, the koala has few natural predators.
Despite being so adorable and arousing such positive feelings in people due to their extremely peculiar appearance and peaceful attitude, there are very few koalas left in the world. So few, that the Australian Koala Foundation (known by its acronym AKF) considers it " functionally extinct ." Experts estimate that the total number does not exceed eighty thousand and that their role in Eastern Australian ecosystems has been reduced to a minimum.
This is not only aggravating and sad, but it shows us once again the cruelty and arrogance of human beings: while there are millions of good-for-nothing people, living off other people's money and not getting up from the couch to do something useful with their time whom no one calls "functionally extinct", the poor koala is considered almost irrelevant to nature only because our species has reduced its population to too low a number.
One of the problems that lead to the use of this classification is that with such a small population it cannot be ensured that there are many more generations. Furthermore, since its ecosystem is so deteriorated, it will not be viable for much longer and the koala's role in food chains has diminished to the point of losing importance.
In 2013, the company Nature published the results of a study that focused on investigating the impact that functional extinctions have on different food chains. They took certain species as a reference and tried to estimate the consequences of their mortality on the entire ecosystem. The term "functional" was used for the disappearance that occurs due to the reduction of its population; "numerical" extinction, on the other hand, is that which consists of the species completely disappearing.
It is believed that millions of years ago, the koala in Australia had the function of being food for megafauna. Today they collaborate with the fertilization of the same forests that serve as their food. Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, humans killed more than eight million koalas through hunting, and that was just one of the many attacks by our species against theirs.