They are not extinct so I think they are nailing it
Comment on (・∀・)
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 3 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.
MTK@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Cypher@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Funny you say that, theyre on their way to extinction
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
Well, it’s probably not the fault of the species responsible for the current great extinction, is it? /s
Cypher@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Rampant chlamydia is playing a part but sadly it’s mostly human driven.
MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca 3 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.
Ledericas@lemm.ee 2 days ago
koalas are kinda of worst off than pandas.
Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 3 days ago
!Subscribe
umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
hey i remember that reddit post
tetris11@lemmy.ml 3 days ago
Same with Puffins. Cute little flying penguins that happily catch worms in their beak, only to be robbed in mid-air by hawks and other birds of prey. How did they survive this long?
They’re good at breeding, and do well in times of abundance…
Ledericas@lemm.ee 2 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.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 3 days ago
This pasta aged well.
DeathsEmbrace@lemm.ee 3 days ago
You know evolution is more survival than evolution or women wouldn’t be bleeding needlessly every month?
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Just wait until all plants in Australia die out except for eucalyptus trees and koalas take over the continent
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
Relevant: youtube.com/shorts/9IZ410VrikQ
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Koalas
a small overview about the chlamydia
and it isn’t even something they causedit was from invasive species.
One brief overview
with some extra info
The reason koalas eat only eucalyptus isn’t stupidity. It’s niche evolution. They live in a place with high competition for resources. Having specialized digestive tracts and gut flora allows them to have a food source that isn’t under competition. this is a benefit, not a failure. They literally eat something that is poisonous to pretty much every other species. That is an incredible evolutionary adaptation.
Their joeys eating pap is not exclusive to koalas either. It’s not only found across the world, the exposure to the gut flora of the parent happens with most mammals, if in a less direct manner. You can even find a ton of information about what happens when human gut flora becomes unbalanced, and it isn’t very pretty. It’s just worse for koalas.
Not every species is a generalist, and we don’t want them to be.
a note on why koalas bellow so much
The source may be a crappy blog, but the information in it matches more detailed data from better sources, and keeps it short enough for this.
As with most behaviors in other species, attributing human judgement and definitions tends to be misleading. While koalas are pretty unique in the lack of mating rituals, they’re not doing it for human reasons. Nor are attempts to copulate outside of season as common as the pasta makes it seem. Besides, that’s something humans actually do share with them besides the presence of fingerprints. It also isn’t so rare in animals as to be remarkable. Copulation behaviors are used outside of mating by plenty of species for social reasons. It isn’t in koalas, but since it does increase the chances of mating, it isn’t a bad adaptation.
And the extra cerebro-spinal fluid isn’t a special ed helmet, it’s another adaptation found in other tree dwelling species. Why would an arboreal species having adaptations to mitigate risk from falls be a negative?
Yeah, I get it, the pasta is meant for entertainment, but it also spreads half truths, outright incorrect or outdated information, and skips over facts for the entertainment value. Then people read it and spout it out later as fact.
It’s just a crappy copy pasta, not anything meant to be taken as truth, but people are more dumb than koalas.
This pasta in particular isn’t the worst (the sunfish one takes the prize for being the most full of bull). Nor is it a bad thing to enjoy as entertainment. But for crying out loud people, don’t take random, unsourced copy pasta as an educational tool.
Also This comment covers some things I missed
Then there’s this one that is even better
JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You know Lemmy is getting good when you have comments like this
Like how the fuck do you know so much about koalas? It’s a rethorical question mostly. Thank you for sharing :)
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Reddit. Reddit is why I went and looked into koalas.
The three animal copy pastas, sunfish, koalas, and pandas just pissed me off because people started parroting the shit irl. They’re all funny enough when everyone knows they’re jokes based on bullshit, but people are stupid.
So, I went looking for more information. For the sunfish and pandas, there were already better anti-pastas available that came up after quick searches.
Not for koalas. I did find some later, after I made the initial comment, but when I first wrote up the parts I did, I couldn’t find any. I later edited in links to the better counters when I discovered them.
But, for real, once I started hearing people wanting to charter a boat to go and find sunfish to throw rocks at, I started fuming. Same with the people that started opposing conservation efforts to pandas and koalas because of the bullshit in the copy pastas. Treating some text meme like educational material is just too damn much.
So, for years on reddit, I’d throw down the anti-pastas when they came up. Here on lemmy, I thought they had failed to follow people, but the last few months I’ve started seeing references to them again. I’m glad I didn’t delete the files for them.
JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Thank you for your work
I wish to subscribe to more anti pasta info
I’ll have the panda one now if you have time
Sinthesis@lemmy.today 1 day ago
I think I’m an antipastafarian now. What do we worship? Hot dogs? Wikipedia?
bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
Apparently it’s become a thing to copy and paste the same koala information everywhere, which thankfully leads to a debunk as a response. See, for instance, lemmy.world/comment/8270878 or lemmy.ca/comment/16408551
JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I see XD
crazyhotpasta@lemm.ee 3 days ago
I loved how you and Mr. Acker fucked with Mesa Verde!
JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Fuck yea!
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Getting a serious response to a copypasta shitpost?
Believe it or not, straight to jail.
Initiateofthevoid@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Much love for the antipasta! Thanks for the writeup.
This bellowing bit is awesome:
Emphasis mine.
Koala males really be out there screaming so loud so other males will stay away? I think that’s neat. Like biological magnets, pushing and pulling with the same scream.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Isn’t it cool? Evolution takes life into the most complex and amazing places
Ledericas@lemm.ee 2 days ago
also koala have a RETROvirus KORV circulating too, basically some of them might get KIDS eventually and get infections. and it was likely spread from a specific type of simian virus.
Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
Thanks for correcting the record.
Sure stupidity exists in the natural world, but adaptation to habitat can also explain a lot of behaviors too.