How many visitors can a Koala bear?

Koalas can become stressed by noisy and up-close encounters with human visitors, a University of Melbourne study has determined.

The koala is a much-loved Australian icon and extremely popular with foreign tourists, but little work had been done to understand how they cope with human interaction.

Dr Jean-Loup Rault from the University's Animal Welfare Science Centre said researchers set out to answer this question.

“Our study showed that up-close and noisy encounters with human visitors resulted in koalas showing so called 'increased vigilance', which is a common response to stress."

"Stress is generally an energy-costly mechanism. This could be a problem as koalas survive on an extremely low energy diet — largely made up of Eucalyptus leaves — and minimize energy expenditure by sleeping 20 hours a day."

Researchers tested the effect of visitor numbers, visitor noise, and visitor proximity on koalas at the Koala Conservation Centre, which forms part of the Phillip Island Nature Parks network.

“This work also highlights the value and importance of behavioural observations as a monitoring tool to assess visitor-related stress in koalas” according to Zoo's Victoria's Sally Sherwen, a collaborator on the study.

The research raises questions about the classic trade off between visitor education and animal welfare.

“Some wildlife parks offer close encounters or even hands on experiences with koalas," said Dr Rault.

"Only now are we beginning to understand the impact of these visitor encounters on koalas’ behaviour and welfare."

'Number of nearby visitor and noise level affect vigilance in captive koalas' is published in the May edition of Applied Animal Behaviour Science.

Source: Here

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Koala Bears

Koala bears, as a species, have long been identified as cute cuddly creatures, with countless plushie variations of their likeness found in countless toy stores and fair grounds.

The 2006 CGI-animated Disney movie The Wild, featured a koala as one of its main characters, one whose presence in the movie can be easily understood given how popular koala bears are.

Given their cuteness, questions related to the actual ownership of koala bears as pets have been asked by millions of children more than once. Much to their disappointment, however, the actual feasibility of owning a koala bear as a pet is not realistic for private home owners, but possible for research personnel and animal reservation sites.

Native to Australia, koala bears are creatures which cannot be owned as pets legally. Special permits which require certain prerequisites are required from wildlife centers and researchers, who can’t even indefinitely keep koalas with them throughout their respective life spans.

As animals, koalas are not like cats or dogs, in the sense that they can be readily domesticated. Being nocturnal, they’re not really as much fun as one would presume them to be, with koalas actually being notorious for being grouchy at certain occasions.

That plus their steady diet of eucalyptus leaves makes them quite troublesome to keep as pets for private homeowners, who need to keep a steady supply for koalas to consume. Dedicated wildlife centers have no qualms satisfying a koala bear’s particular needs and requirements in this sense though, which is a different story altogether.

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