The Koala is a marsupial, an animal whose young one is borne at an early stage of development and spends many months maturing in its mothers pouch. While most other marsupials have front opening pouches, those of koalas and wombats open in the middle first. Then as the baby becomes bigger, the pouch expands forward, pushing the opening towards the rear. Females breed from the age of two, and are able to produce a young each year until their lifespan of 12 to 15 years expires.

A Koala from the cooler southern areas of Australia is normally longer-furred, larger and heavier than one from the warmer northern State of Queensland. They need the fur to protect themselves against cold weather.

During the nineteenth and the first quarter of the twentieth century, Europeans traded in Koala skins and hundreds of thousand pelts were sold overseas. By the late 1930’s Koalas were extinct in South Australia and rare to be seen in Victoria and New South Wales. Today, Koalas are strictly protected in all Australian States. Excess animals from island colonies have been reintroduced into mainland locations where they were once common. Even so loss of habitant to agriculture and urban development, road deaths, attacks by dogs and the effects of Chlamydia, which causes infertility, all threaten the Koala’s wellbeing. Other traditional Koala enemies are large pythons, the Wedge tailed Eagle and the Powerful Owl.