• @gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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    20320 days ago

    Koalas are fucking horrible animals.

    They have one of the smallest brain to body ratios of any mammal, additionally - their brains are smooth. A brain is folded to increase the surface area for neurons. If you present a koala with leaves plucked from a branch, laid on a flat surface, the koala will not recognise it as food. They are too thick to adapt their feeding behaviour to cope with change. In a room full of potential food, they can literally starve to death.

    This is not the token of an animal that is winning at life.

    Speaking of stupidity and food, one of the likely reasons for their primitive brains is the fact that additionally to being poisonous, eucalyptus leaves (the only thing they eat) have almost no nutritional value. They can’t afford the extra energy to think, they sleep more than 80% of their fucking lives. When they are awake all they do is eat, shit and occasionally scream like fucking satan.

    Because eucalyptus leaves hold such little nutritional value, koalas have to ferment the leaves in their guts for days on end. Unlike their brains, they have the largest hind gut to body ratio of any mammal.

      • @MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca
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        819 days ago

        Its just like pandas, if you can find a niche where there is a ton of low quality food that nobody else wants but you can gobble it down then you win.

    • @DeathsEmbrace@lemm.ee
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      419 days ago

      You know evolution is more survival than evolution or women wouldn’t be bleeding needlessly every month?

    • @Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      4
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      19 days ago

      oh and they can eat a specific type of eucalyptus, and not just any type like the invasive blue gum. and they wont conceptualize leaves in front of them, if its not on a branch.

      also being susceptible to chlamydia, which was theoretically though to have come from farm animals by colonist centuries ago. additionally, they have a retrovirus, called koala retrovrisus(koala HIV) which likely came from a monkey virus(high genetic similarities), they dont know how it came from them.

    • Pyr
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      118 days ago

      Just wait until all plants in Australia die out except for eucalyptus trees and koalas take over the continent