The stoned koala myth may be amusing, but it’s not true. Koalas sleep for so long because their diet isn’t very nutritious.
Why koalas are harder to spot than kangaroos
Of the two blue riband Australian cute animals, koalas are considerably harder to spot in the wild than kangaroos. This is partly because there are more kangaroos in Australia and partly because kangaroos are bigger, but mainly because kangaroos move around more.
Koalas aren’t exactly brimming with energy. You might get one awake for long enough for photo opportunites at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Brisbane or the Port Stephens Koala Sanctuary in New South Wales. You might see koalas in Adelaide, scampering up a tree at the Morialta Conservation Park. You may even get lucky spotting active koalas in the Otway Ranges of the Great Ocean Road. But most of the time, if you see a koala in Australia, it will be in a tree, asleep.
How long do koalas sleep for?
Koalas usually sleep for between 18 and 22 hours a day. It’s a herculean effort that a human teenager would struggle to match.
This has led to an urban myth that koalas get high on eucalyptus leaves, and they spend their lives drugged out. But are koalas stoned? Alas, no. They’re just not getting a lot of energy from their diet.
Why koalas seem like they’re stoned
The reason koalas appear to be stoned is that eucalyptus leaves are pretty awful to eat. They don’t provide a great deal of nutrition, and they’re laced with toxins that are difficult to process.
Koalas have evolved to be able to process these toxins, but they’re still living on a high fibre, low nutrition diet that takes a great deal of energy to digest. Sleeping for so long each day is simply a coping mechanism. They need to sleep for so long in order to conserve energy.
The only other animals that can get away with eating eucalyptus leaves are fellow marsupials called gliders. The eucalypts of Australia are a genuinely extraordinary feat of evolution, but the rest of Australia’s wildlife has decided to give the trees a wide berth.
Sorry to any stoners wishing to adopt the koala as their emblem – koalas aren’t one of you.
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