Are koalas stoned or high on eucalyptus leaves?
The stoned koala myth may be amusing, but it’s not true that koalas are stoned or high on eucalyptus leaves. Koalas sleep for so long because their diet isn’t very nutritious.
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 it’s mainly because kangaroos move around more.
Koalas aren’t exactly brimming with energy. You might get one awake for long enough to cuddle a koala in Brisbane or Cairns. You might catch koalas in Adelaide, scampering up a tree near Morialta Falls at the Morialta Conservation Park. Some visitors may even get lucky spotting active koalas in the Otway Ranges of the Great Ocean Road. And they’re at eye-level at the Mikkira Station on the Eyre Peninsula. But most of the time, if you see a koala in Australia, it will be in a tree, asleep.
Tick off 9 Australian bucket list experiences
- Take Blue Mountains day tour from Sydney – with kangaroo-feeding at a wildlife park, Scenic World tickets and a Parramatta River cruise.
- Snorkel or dive on the Great Barrier Reef from Cairns.
- Do Australia’s most spectacular drive on a Great Ocean Road day tour from Melbourne.
- Drive along the beach on a 4WD day tour of Fraser Island, the world’s biggest sand island.
- Have a dune-top barbecue dinner and stargazing session in the shadow of Uluru.
- See penguins on Phillip Island – and more native wildlife at the Moonlit Sanctuary – on a day trip from Melbourne.
- Go snorkelling, sandboarding and kayaking on Moreton Island from Brisbane.
- Meet gloriously cute quokkas on Rottnest Island near Perth with a ferry and bike hire package.
- Kayak with dolphins in Byron Bay.
Sleepy koalas or stoned koalas: Are koalas high?
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.
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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.
Who else eats eucalyptus leaves?
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. Koalas do, however, have chlamydia.
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