Animals / koala-nutritional-adaptations
Facts about Koala Nutritional Adaptations
- 05
Low nutritional value in eucalyptus leaves forces koalas to sleep up to 22 hours per day to conserve energy.
- 04
Specialized fiber-fermenting chambers in a koala's hindgut allow it to extract nutrients from eucalyptus leaves that most mammals cannot digest.
- 03
A koala's highly selective diet means it consumes only a small number of eucalyptus species out of the hundreds available in Australia.
- 02
The koala's gut microbiome contains specialized bacteria that help break down the highly toxic terpenes found in eucalyptus leaves.
- 01
Koalas detoxify the toxic phenolic compounds in eucalyptus leaves using a highly specialized liver with cytochrome P450 enzymes.