Once the size of just a jellybean, the baby is now about the size of softball, has opened its eyes and is starting to move. It isn't expected to fully emerge until mid-March. She gave birth July 5, but because she's a marsupial, the little joey has been developing inside a pouch on her abdomen for the past six months. So soon the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium's female koala, Katy, will have some company in her habitat. More: A 'Christmas miracle:' Columbus Zoo's 3 giraffe calves a rare featīut occasionally, they do find time to mate. And when they aren't sleeping, the furry, two-foot marsupials are usually eating eucalyptus leaves off the trees they call home. The solitary animals live alone, spending most of their time - about 15-20 hours a day - sleeping. While a female can breed annually, they tend to have only around 6 to 7 joeys across their average 12-15 year lifespan.įemales tend to live longer than males, and males are more susceptible to accidents near highways and areas of human habitation as they tend to move further away from their original habitat.Koalas may have perfected the life of quarantine long before it became a necessity in 2020. However, if the mother goes through a breeding season without giving birth to a new joey, they may stay with their parent for longer. They will stay close by to their mother for about another 6 months, until their new sibling appears out of the pouch.

They will be fully off milk by the time they reach around their first year of age, though they will generally have left the pouch entirely before this. This pap prepares them for moving on to their leafy, solid diet once fully weaned.Įventually the koala will come out of the pouch and eat leaves while riding around on their mothers back. The young joey eats the pap and gets everything they need from it to provide them energy and the bacteria they need.įrom about 7 months (22 – 30 weeks) they will start to emerge from their pouch and move onto a diet of pap in addition to their milk. The mother then defecates, and once her normal bowel movement has passed, the runnier pap follows afterwards. In order to eat this ‘pap’, the young joey sticks its head out of their mothers pouch and will nuzzle their face against her bum. If she didn’t do this, the young joeys would never be able to digest and get enough nutrients from their very limited diet. More importantly it contains lots of the micro-organisms that the young joeys will need to prepare their stomachs to digest the leaves of the eucalyptus trees. This is runnier than their normal poop pellets, and contains lots of protein. It might sound disgusting, but the mother does this by preparing a special kind of faeces called ‘pap’. This is usually a few days or weeks after they are able to see – around 6 -7 months.īefore it moves on to the eucalyptus gum tree leaves though, the mothers prepare their your an intermediary diet to prepare them to be able to digest their mature diet. Once a koala is able to start investigating the world with its own eyes and ears, and their head poking out of the pouch, they can start to wean from their mothers milk onto a more mature diet.

Koala Joeys Eat There Mothers Poop When Weaning

Bany koala