Mammals Part 1: Koalas

G'day guys!

I just finished my 6 week internship. I can't believe it. Time goes by so fast.

My last section was MAMMALS!!!

Of course, I was more than pleased with this. Even though I enjoyed the other sections, I always knew in my heart I was a mammal girl. This department is a lot of hard work, but while you are doing the hard work, you can pet a kangaroo or a koala which somehow makes everything so much better.

The basic routine is that you come in start working in the koala enclosures. You first "condense" all the Eucalyptus or gum in the enclosure. So you go to each of the water stands and take out all the branches, if the branches are mostly eaten or look dry/grimy you chuck it in a trash container and if it still looks alright you put it aside and reuse it.

Dirty Enclosure

Then you empty out the water from the container. Once all of the containers have been done, you take all the discarded gum down to a trailer to be recycled and you put back the alright ones.
Then you go to the Gum Room!

Gum Room! Yum Yum

It's actually fun, it's a smaller greenhouse filled with different species of Eucalyptus and you can grab an array of different ones. Each Koala gets 3 branches. At first, I didn't really know which ones they liked or didn't like or what looked "yummy" to them. But as the week went on, I could really pick out the nice ones and it even started looking yummy to me since I know they would be so excited about it. Haha, It was just really hard to get it out of the containers sometimes. They have really small branches and get tangled really easy, and some of them are really bushy so it can be a little bit of a wrestling match in which I lost quite a few times. Sometimes I would think I found a really nice one and spend some time and energy trying to get it out and it ends up being a really small one with not many leaves. Haha a little frustrating.

One Enclosure's Worth Of Gum

Koala Snuffing My Gum Choice

The zoo has quite a few koalas, we have the koala house that houses 4 males and 8 females plus a.... Baby!!!!

I Mustache Ask You A Question c;

His name is Winston (yes like my fish ;D) and he is one of the cutest things I have ever seen. He's painfully adorable. He's about 8 months old now and is starting to eat the some of the leaves like his mommy c': They grow up so quick!

There are a lot of koalas around the zoo in general, I still don't know where all of them are? I felt like every other day I would discover a random new koala, which is a little embarrassing. I think I just took the for granted. All the ones outside are mature males who need to be solitary since they will fight other males to be macho and such ;) The males inside are still pretty young and aren't as keen to fight.

ANYWAY, after picking out all the Eucalyptus branches, you go back to the exhibit and put the new branches in! Yay! Some of the koalas get really excited about the new food and will come right up while others are really indifferent and just stay asleep.

Pleased With Gum Choice.

 On my first day, I was doing one of the male enclosures and he actually climbed down off his branches and came right up to me. It was so cute.
I was all like:

Except, it was my first day and I'm not allowed to pick them up without a zoo keeper present. Koalas have really weak ribs, they are about the size of toothpicks and can break really easy. So if you don't know how to handle them you can really hurt them. Anyway, this male koala is coming right up to me and I go down to pet him and he latches on trying to climb me. They set me up to work on this alone while they did other projects. So I'm like, "oh god." and try to unlatch him off me and walk away. Which is like the hardest thing ever. Is it even legal to walk away from a koala that wants to cuddle you?!?! Then he followed me and tried to climb up my leg. Okay guys, their paw/hands are made to climb trees and they have some intense nails. Also most of their strength comes from their arms for climbing and such. What I'm trying to get at is that it hurt. So once again I had to pry his hands off my legs and try to just walk away from him again. He was NOT about to let that happen. As I walked away, he galloped toward me and would try to climb me again. Guys, do you know how hard it is to say no to a koala? So freaking hard. But I had to keep pushing him away so he wouldn't use my leg as a branch. So I ended up having to run around the enclosure to prevent him from trying to climb me. So I would run by one of the containers and take all the branches out and keep on moving to stay away from him. I'm sure it was quite a sight. I wish I took a video! He was so determined to get me. Full on gallop/sprint. Nakeisha thought it was because he wanted to mate with me.

I was quite flattered ;)
I wasn't actually aware that koalas made any special noises. I thought that they pretty quite animals and I was semi correct. Koalas, for the most part, do not make a lot of noise unless they want to mate. 

When they want to mate, they make this weird guttural blech, hiccup, dry heaving sound. You can hear for your self here: Koala Mating Call 

I believe you can imagine my surprise the first time I heard it. I thought some animal was dying. I couldn't even figure out what type animal. A mammal? Bird? Reptile?? Then I look up and see Nugget, the koala, making that noise. Ah, everything kinda makes sense now ;) Haha so every once in a while you'll hear the males make that call. For the most part, the females seem fairly indifferent toward the mating calls, except Milly. Milly is such a horn dog! I love it. She'll hear some of the males make their mating call, perk up her ears, race down the branch to the ground and try to jump out of the exhibit to get laid. Nice. So you just hear these jumping and scratching sounds and you look down seeing this very determined female trying to get to the males to get laid. You go girl!!

WATCH: Horn Dog Milly Trying To Get To The Boys

Koalas are not the most active animals, they spend up to 20 hours a day just sleeping! Crazy, but they are pretty cute when they are asleep and when they are awake! 

At first, all the koalas looked the same to me, but as I worked with them more I could start to see little differences and start appreciating that some koalas are pretty, handsome, cute, and not so cute haha. I unfortunately can't the differences between all the koalas, there are a few, especially in females that I can pick out like Cuddles, Willow, Kimberly, and of course little Winston. Cuddles is a sweetheart but she's like a pug in a sense that she's ugly cute. Haha I also like that I can tell her apart. She sometimes babysits Winston to give his mom, Kimberly, a break.

Willow is really pretty, she has the fluffiest little ears and she just has a youthful look about her. She is just too cute!

Then there is Snoopy and Jack who I clean in the morning, they are outside koalas but they are always keen for their food in the morning.

Every week, we also weigh all the koalas and give them some vitamin supplements. The scale is pretty cute, I forgot to take a picture of it, but it's a hanging scale like if you want to weight fruit with some branches for the koalas to hang onto. The zoo weighs the koalas every week to make sure that there is large increase or decrease in weight that could signify a medical problem. Some of the koalas hate their supplement paste, some are indifferent, and some actually like it. One koala, Lilly, really really loves her paste. If she sees you walking in with syringes full of paste her ears perk up and she comes toward you. She then grabs your hand while you put the syringe in her mouth and gives you a death grip and bits the syringe to make it go faster. All the guests thought it was really cute, I thought it was a little scary haha.

I have to say guys, I really loved the koalas. I loved them so much, I stole one ;)

Overall really great time!! It's funny, at first I wasn't that into the koalas, I thought they were pretty boring since they spent so much time sleeping and Nakeisha loved them. By the end, she's way over the koalas and I'm obsessed with them :)